Sublime

Sarah McNally considers herself a humble bookseller while also being the founder and owner of an ever-expanding empire, McNally Jackson, now likely the third-largest buyer of books in the city, after only Barnes & Noble and the Strand. She is a thumb on the scale of cultural life in the city. She hosts several book groups at the stores and privately runs several more. Hang around literary circles long enough and word will reach you that she is reading "Middlemarch" with Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy and has read Clarice Lispector with David Byrne and Esther Perel. Her New York is a place where we are all only one read away from our best selves, lacking only the space to dig in. She is there to provide. “I want people to know that they can trust us with their reading life, that this is not a sloppy nor commercial project,” she said with characteristic fervor. "I am working at the limits of my ability and doing so for what I believe is a good cause: the life of the mind in New York City." Link in bio. Photo: @jeremy_liebman