Project Bookshelf: From the Bookshelves of Trista Edwards

Ah, the bookshelf. A writer’s most prized possession. This week Sundress Publications is showing our bookshelf love by inviting you all to snoop around our bookshelves and learn the back story on all the odds and ends that make our shelves, well, uniquely ours.

Trista Edwards

“Aside from the book this shelf houses a globe, signed The Silent Comedy CD, picture of a banjo, a dead plant, an owl candle, a glass pig, my great-grandmother’s angel, a glass telephone, and a picture of my best friends. I recently organized this shelf in a manner that is not alphabetical but personally associative. The books flow organically according to my life, how old I was when I read them, where I was living, who gave them to me, etc. This shelf is my visual diary.

“This shelf is similar to the first in its purpose and organization but also (on the second from the top shelf–contains poetry overflow) This shelf also houses photos taken in Paris, France, a Pittsburgh Steelers painting, a candle stick, three Momiji message dolls, two boxes (one tin & the other cardboard) full of letters, cards, drawings, and photos friends and family have sent me in the mail since moving to to Texas from Georgia one year ago, a Joker bobble-head, and one Batman Pez.

“This shelf is completely alphabetical with anthologies resting on the bottom. There is complete rhyme (pun intended) and reason to this shelf. This shelf also houses a homemade raven resting on a pumpkin, vase of incense and holder, a mermaid matchbook, a tiny Buddha, a mermaid paperweight, a moon candle holder, and a tiny mixed media painting bought from a street vendor in Montemarte.

“Each shelf holds not only my books but pieces of my life and of those I love. They are truly the most prized aspects of my tiny, Texas apartment.”