Publishers Weekly, the publishing industry’s leading trade magazine, named Watchung Booksellers its 2026 Bookstore of the Year, picking the shop at 54 Fairfield St. over thousands of independent bookstores nationwide. It is also one of two survivors among the seven bookstores Montclair once had, novelist Thomas Pluck recounted in the literary site Lit Hub. Here is how the store got here, who runs it, how to take part and when to go.
What Makes Watchung Booksellers Different
Watchung Booksellers works less like a shop and more like a civic institution. It runs book clubs, story times, school book fairs, its own podcast and an author events program big enough to fill a church sanctuary. It calls itself the hometown bookstore for more than 70 local authors, according to the store’s profile on Libro.fm, an audiobook service that shares sales with independent stores.
That record earned the national award. Publishers Weekly judges the award on community engagement and bookselling expertise. The nominating letter described Watchung Booksellers as a beloved hub for literature and community.
Owner Maddie Ciliotta-Young made the store’s case in a newsletter to customers after the win: “We believe that books have the power to shape, change, and connect communities.”
That belief took 35 years to build, and it started on a second floor.
When Did Watchung Booksellers Open? From Watchung Plaza to Fairfield Street
Watchung Booksellers opened in 1991 at 33 Watchung Plaza, on the second floor above the old Bradner’s Pharmacy. Kathy Linsk founded it. Margot Sage-EL and Trina Rogers bought the store in 1996. Sage-EL became sole owner in 2000 and moved the shop to 54 Fairfield St. in August 2001.
Children’s books brought Sage-EL into the business. In 1994 she started Great Owl Books, a mail-order catalog of multicultural children’s books, and folded it into Watchung Booksellers when she bought the store. The owl still appears in the Kids’ Room logo.
Almost every other Montclair bookstore from that era is gone: The Cup & Chaucer, Orion Books, The Book Corner, Beam Me Up, Middle Earth and The Compleat Strategist, a tabletop gaming shop that also stocked military history and fantasy.
The store that survived is now in its second generation.
Who Owns Watchung Booksellers? A Mother-Daughter Handoff
Maddie Ciliotta-Young, Sage-EL’s daughter, owns and runs Watchung Booksellers and the Kids’ Room. She became co-owner in fall 2023 and took full ownership in early 2024.
Ciliotta-Young was not an early convert. She grew up in Montclair and inside the store, according to the Watchung Booksellers Podcast. But in her award newsletter she admitted that when her mother traded the Great Owl catalog for a storefront, she stopped reading for a full year in protest. She worked as an educator before taking over, she told Patch.
Sage-EL still works at the store as owner emeritus and helps with author events. Mother and daughter recorded “Shop Talk with the Bosses,” a podcast episode on the store’s past and future, and it makes a good first listen for new customers.
The biggest change of the handoff years sits four doors down.
The Kids’ Room: Montclair’s Children’s Bookstore
If you are shopping for anyone under 18, go to the Kids’ Room at 44 Fairfield St. Watchung Booksellers moved its children’s inventory there when the shop opened in 2023. It now stocks books and merchandise for babies through young adults.
The move solved a space problem. Ciliotta-Young told Patch the shared room at 54 Fairfield St. had limited what the store could do for kids. The new shop, she said, would let it reach area schools “by way of school orders, book fairs and author visits.” The Kids’ Room also has a back garden for author receptions and outdoor story times.
Aubrey Cece manages the Kids’ Room, and Caroline Shurtleff coordinates school events, according to the store’s podcast. The space hosts adult author readings, book clubs and private events too.
Those events are where most of the store’s community life happens.
Book Clubs, Author Events and the Watchung Booksellers Podcast
To join a Watchung Booksellers book club or attend a reading, register on the store’s Ticket Tailor page, which lists every event. Booksellers host the clubs themselves. Cece hosts Books in Translation and Just the T, which reads fiction and nonfiction by trans authors. Marni Jessup hosts a club working through The New York Times’ list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. The store also runs a middle readers club for children roughly 8 to 12 and a newer club built around books discussed on the podcast.
Kathryn Counsell, the store’s director of author events, books the readings, and the biggest ones leave the building. In October 2026, the store brought Yotam Ottolenghi to First Congregational Church at 40 S. Fullerton Ave. for a conversation with Ina Garten about his cookbook “Simple Too.” Other names come to Fairfield Street itself. David Sedaris signed books in the store in February 2021.
The Watchung Booksellers Podcast launched in 2024 on Independent Bookstore Day, a national celebration of indie shops held each spring. Counsell and Jessup produce it inside the store. Guests have included the Liu family, three published authors who live in town, and Montclair Public Library director Janet Torsney, who joined Sage-EL to discuss how the library and the store work together. Start with Episode 1, in which Sage-EL tells the store’s history to Liz Egan of The New York Times Book Review.
Visiting Watchung Booksellers: Hours, Getting There and What’s Nearby
Watchung Booksellers and the Kids’ Room open at 10 a.m. every day and close at different times on weekdays:
- Watchung Booksellers, 54 Fairfield St.: Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Adult fiction, nonfiction, gifts and the main events space. Phone: 973-744-7177.
- The Kids’ Room, 44 Fairfield St.: Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Children’s and young adult books, story times and school book fair orders.
Both stores are a short walk from the Watchung Avenue station on NJ Transit’s Montclair-Boonton Line, so a weekday stop fits easily into the commute home.
The surest way to keep a bookstore open is to buy books there. Order your next title from watchungbooksellers.com or the Kids’ Room. If you listen to audiobooks, buy them through the store’s Libro.fm page. Sign up for the store’s newsletter on its website to hear about readings early, then pick one event on the calendar and go.
A national award doesn’t keep the lights on; customers do.
