The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Rough Draft Bar & Books
In this episode, I chat with Amanda and Anthony Stromoski, co-owners of Rough Draft Bar & Books located at Kingston, New York's historic four corners.
What if your favorite bookstore also poured a perfect espresso and kept an impeccable tap list? Amanda and Anthony explain how a 1774 schoolhouse became a living room for the Hudson Valley. From Brooklyn careers to a life anchored in community, they share the turning points—personal loss, a craving for connection, and a decade of dreaming—that led to opening a bookstore-bar where people want to linger.
We dig into the choices that shape trust and atmosphere: building with reclaimed wood and approachable furniture, prioritizing comfort over polish, and crafting a bar and coffee program that serves readers from morning to late night. On the shelves, their mantra—something for everyone, not all things to all people—guides a curated mix of literary fiction, evolving genre sections, and a standout local interest collection: Catskills hiking guides, Hudson Valley geology and architecture, and beloved regional cookbooks. They break down how staff picks, customer requests, and real-time feedback keep the selection fresh and relevant.
Beyond the shop, we map the region’s creative heartbeat. Expect insider recs for Overlook Mountain, Huckleberry Point, and the rugged Devil’s Path, plus a post-hike stop at West Kill Brewing. We also spotlight neighboring indie bookstores—Spotty Dog Books and Ale in Hudson and the Golden Notebook in Woodstock—that helped inspire Rough Draft’s hybrid model. The conversation closes with two standout reads: Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires for its empathy-forward perspective on history, and David Litt’s It’s Only Drowning for the lessons of learning hard things as an adult.
If you love independent bookshops, Hudson Valley travel, Catskills hikes, craft beer, and the art of thoughtful curation, you’ll feel right at home here.
Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs a new third place, and leave a review to help more listeners discover the show.
You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue
It’s Only Drowning, David Litt
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly, and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe, and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media. And remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 315. This past week, I was invited to and attended a wonderful high tee at the University Club in Santa Barbara to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday. It's always lovely gathering with a community of readers, and the University Club members put on a delicious high tee with readings by actors from the Ensemble Theatre Company from their latest play titled The Complete Works of Jane Austen, A Bridge. Tickets for the show are available at etcsb.org. Please let me know if you're doing anything special to celebrate Jane Austen's birthday on December the 16th. Okay, let's get started with this week's interview. Rough Draft Bar and Books is a bar and bookstore located at Kingston, New York's historic four corners, owned by Amanda and Anthony Stromowski. Along with offering a curated selection of new books, they are dedicated to providing a fantastic selection of beer, cider, wine, counterculture coffee, local pastries, and savory pies. Rough Draft is a place for people from Kingston and beyond to gather together for reading, drinking, conversation, and nightly events. Hi, Amanda and Anthony, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks, you two.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_01:Let's begin with learning about you both and the moment when you first connected. What stood out to you about each other then? And how has that evolved as co-founders and partners in life and business?
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So we we met um a while back. We met when we were 13. We're from the same uh small hometown or two very small towns next to each other, and we went to high school together. Um and we met at Summer Band when we were 13. And as a 13-year-old boy, I think the thing I was most interested in is that I thought she was cute and that she had a great smile and she paid attention to me. And I just thought I just thought she was she was extremely sweet. And um so I we probably connected on very superficial um points at at first. As 13-year-olds do.
SPEAKER_01:And I want to ask, what instruments did you play?
SPEAKER_02:I played clarinet.
SPEAKER_00:And I was a percussionist.
SPEAKER_01:And Amanda, was it the same kind of feeling for you?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, you know, uh the drummers were the were the popular boys in the band, and and uh I also thought Anthony was very cute and um but also very smart and very nice. And um yeah, he was just like we we became friends really quickly and and we dated on and off through high school, but we've always been best friends and um we've inspired each other and helped each other learn and yeah, mostly some some uh some breaks, as she said.
SPEAKER_00:But we've been we've been best friends and mostly together for um wow, like 28 years now.
SPEAKER_02:And one of the one of the motivations for for opening Rough Draft was that so we could work together every day. You know, we've we've always had uh before this we had separate careers and um wanted to, you know, be able to go to work together every day, spend time together every day, which we definitely do now.
SPEAKER_01:How is that? I mean, you must have some conflicts, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean nobody nobody could say could say otherwise, but we've gotten pretty good at you know compromising and and working through things in a way that we can help each other see the other one's perspective, and we usually end up agreeing in the end.
SPEAKER_00:I think our our skill sets are very complementary to each other and our approaches are are different but complementary, and so that's really allowed us over time to build a great partnership um at home but also at work.
SPEAKER_01:And what do both of you bring to the table? What are your skill sets?
SPEAKER_00:I would say that um well I was I was trained as a teacher. I was a high school Latin teacher and uh soccer and basketball coach, and then a school administrator before we did this. Um I would say in our partnership um and in our relationship, I'm more of a dreamer, big picture, big picture, big ideas, um, just push ahead, um, not as concerned with the details or all of the challenges at the outset. Um, I I would say Amanda is much more detail-oriented, she's much more of a careful planner. Um I'm probably more of an outgoing people person sometimes, at least when it comes to working with our teams at work. Um and Amanda is the person behind the scenes that really gets a lot of the tricky paperwork and numbers and um communications with uh customers and things like that, that is really difficult for me. Do you want to add anything?
SPEAKER_02:I think that's pretty good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It sounds like you both come together creatively.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. We've collaborated on, you know, uh we we both handle our social media, we collaborate on that. We, you know, we work together on making a logo for the store and you know, merchandise and and everything, kind of outwardly projecting what our brand is, what our mission is, um, what the look and feel of the place is. So we we pretty much agree on that stuff almost all the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you have a clever name, Rough Draft. Who came up with that?
SPEAKER_00:Uh it was from a friend. Um, we have to give credit to Ryan Joyce, who lives in Amsterdam right now. Um, he was a teaching friend of mine, and we had been batting around all different names, most of them with some sort of pun for years. Uh, but Ryan was really uh the mastermind, and he's he's he's the pun master in our friend group, and he he's the one who came up with.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a clever name. I like it a lot. Now, what personal or creative needs led you from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley? And how did the vision for Rough Draft emerge from that shift? And were there any pivotal moments that crystallized your concept? And like me, you enjoy hiking, and I looked up that area, and it is stunning.
SPEAKER_00:Um, the Hudson Valley is a beautiful place. We're really fortunate to live here with so much access to nature, to hiking and camping and and the mountains. Um, we absolutely love living here. We also love living in Brooklyn. We we both lived there for about a decade. Um, I as a in I was in education. Amanda was a journalist. And after 10 years there, I think both of us were at a point in our career where we were looking for a little bit of a change. Living in New York City can also weigh on you over time, um, living in any city. So we had been batting around this idea for a place like Rough Draft for many years. And that as we got to the ninth and 10th years in the city, you know, a lot of things happened. My dad passed away that that tenth year. I think that was a big moment for me. I think it crystallized, as you said, the idea that I wanted to spend more time with family. Um, I wanted to have more of a professional partnership with Amanda and just be able to see her more and spend more time with her. Um, we knew that we loved coming to this area to hike and to camp and to visit the beautiful towns. Um, so we started looking in the Hudson Valley as a place where we might be able to land and hopefully um start this business that we had an idea for.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and we visited many towns. We read many news articles about, you know, the next hip town in the Hudson Valley or upstate. And we explored a lot of those places and landed on Kingston because we spent a few days here. It felt really vibrant. It felt like there were that people actually lived here. It wasn't just a weekender town, it wasn't just a commuter town. People lived here. Um, there were restaurants, there were bars, there were, there was an art scene, um, there was music festivals, and there was not a new bookstore. Um, there's a Barnes and Noble out on the highway, and uh there's there was a used bookstore in town that was um closed last year, but was very popular for many years. But there was not an independent new bookstore like there are in several other Hudson Valley towns that we looked at. So we thought that this place, this town, had the people and had the energy and also had the need for something like Rough Draft.
SPEAKER_01:And in journalism, you specialized in a certain area. Health writing, health and fitness. Oh my goodness. That would be an interesting and frustrating area to be a journalist in right now, I should imagine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I mean, honestly, that was also one of them that was that was I loved my job and I loved I was a freelancer by the time we that we left and moved up here, and I loved it, and I loved the the organizations that I worked for, but that industry was getting harder and harder and less and less rewarding on a daily basis. And we wanted to do something where we were like directly interacting with people day and you know making an immediate difference, even if it's like, you know, a smile and a cup of coffee or a book recommendation instead of just sitting behind a computer all day.
SPEAKER_01:It sounds to me as if you were craving community, family, friends who love to probably go hiking like you, and to be in a position of work where you're building a community within a community. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would agree with that. I would certainly say the school where I where I taught in Brooklyn was also an amazing community. And I I was very fortunate to be to be at a great school with kids that I loved and teachers that that I had great relationships with. Um, I think I personally was looking for more of a chance to work to work more with adults and to have a little bit more of a um work-life balance and uh closer to a nine to five job, um, which looking back now is laughable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, as an as an educator, I I in in the role work that I had, um, it was becoming almost a seven-day-a-week on-call at all hours type of job. And I really, really love that for a time. Um then we opened this business, and now this is also a 24-7.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness. Yeah, having your own business as a bar and a bookshop. Oh my goodness. Tell me about your employees.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, and we have an amazing team, and they're enabling us more and more to to build that balance that we had hoped for. Um, but we're fortunate enough to be to be busy enough as a business that we can, you know, that it is going all hours.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's great to have good employees that allow you to take a break. Now, being a lover of history, I was drawn to your business by your building. What drew you to this particular building and did its history shape your vision for rough draft in any unexpected ways? And if you could share with us what makes rough draft different from a regular bookshop.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the building is something that we lucked that we just kind of lucked out on. And we we live in the neighborhood um and we would walk after we moved to Kingston and started planning our business. I was I was working remotely full-time, and Anthony was bartending and working on a business plan. And we at the time when we started to get serious about looking for a space, this vacant building that this building that we walked by every day for a year and it had been empty and not really in use, um, suddenly had a for rent sign in the window. So we were just like right place, right time. We originally thought that it was um too big for our vision. But then when we started mapping out, you know, how many couches we wanted to have and how many tables and seating areas and a long bar that had lots of seats at it, we realized it was actually the perfect size. But um, it's an old building. It's your what year?
SPEAKER_00:Um, I think I think our building was built in 1774.
SPEAKER_02:1774 um has been partially reconstructed because it was burned by the British. And it is located at um a crossroads that is supposedly the only intersection in the country that has four pre-Revolutionary War buildings on the corners. And so it's a really historic building. It's got big, beautiful windows, it's very um inviting. It's you kind of just everybody who walks by wants to just like see what's going on inside. It was previously called the Kingston Academy.
SPEAKER_00:Um it was I think it was Kingston's first uh schoolhouse.
SPEAKER_02:It was a it was a it was a two-year college. Um, it's been a schoolhouse, it's been a printing press, it's been um a a Sears roebook, it's been um several different restaurants and bars. And so we already had a vision for this, but it kind of fit in perfectly when we thought, well, this is an old schoolhouse, it's an old printing press, it's an old meeting place, and let's fill this up with books and people and you know, kind of bring all that stuff back. And um, it's it's really cool when people come in and people from who've lived in Kingston their whole lives and they say, Oh, I had my I had my baby shower here when it was this restaurant, had my first bartending job here when I was out of profit. And so it's it's a it's a well-loved building community, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And what makes your indie bookshop stand out?
SPEAKER_00:So the name is Rough Draft Bar and Books. Um, our concept when we were building our business plan and designing the space was a place that could be sort of a living room where it would not feel like I think some bookstores feel like libraries. This this we wanted to create a place that people wanted to hang out and be comfortable and kind of stay for a few hours. So we built a long, beautiful bar. We're a beer and wine bar, and we're fortunate in the Hudson Valley to be surrounded by a great uh beer and brewery scene. So we've got a great beer list. We decided to put in an espresso machine and uh partner with um a roaster who could teach us how to make great coffee. And so that that's a big part of our business is everyday coffee scene. And then we have tons of tables and couches and chairs where people can kind of hang out for a couple hours or for a few minutes and say hi to friends. We have people who stay all day and work. We have events at night like trivia um and um literary events. We wanted to create a place where people could come any time of day or night, be comfortable, grab an alcoholic drink if they want that, but it's not necessary. Um, or even just come in and grab a book and head out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Was there much interior and exterior work that needed to be done before you could move in?
SPEAKER_02:Not really. Uh the owner of the building had done quite a bit of renovations previously. And the main thing that we did was build the bar. Um, and we cleared out what used to be a restaurant kitchen, and we turned that back space into book storage, office space. We had a um a bakery that we now co-own um in another space, started out in our back room as kind of an incubation area. We built the tables, we built the bookshelves, we brought in the furniture, but we didn't have to do that much to the building itself.
SPEAKER_00:And we should say originally, we originally we all of our furniture, the bar, um, all of the bookshelves, everything was made of pallet wood and reclaimed wood, which gave the space a very um distinct look. We did that for a couple of reasons. It was much cheaper for us as uh new business owners, but also we wanted to, we just wanted to make the space kind of look comfortable, um, look like a place where you could put your feet up on uh a table and not um and not be worried that you were damaging something really, really expensive.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, nothing too precious, nothing perfect. I love the furniture. In fact, I wanted to ask who built the furniture for you?
SPEAKER_00:Um well, over time, we actually had um one of our original carpenters who helped us work on the space. His name is Anthony Shepherd. Um, he's actually from England. Um he's an incredible um carpenter. I think his company is Atwood Woodworks. And he has he built us a custom-built bar, um, which he rebuilt for us with nicer wood once we were able to afford it, and made us an even nicer bar top. Um, he built all of our custom bookshelves, which which we learned over time are really important in the bookstore industry for taking care of the books and keeping them in good shape for the guests. And he he's just an incredible carpenter.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a couple of tables and chairs there that look fantastic.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we we do have most of the original tables still, and that was our um original contractor who we worked with, and he specialized in building things out of pallets. Um, and he built us some custom things. And then we also have a great consignment store right down the street. And we've had rotated many different couches and comfy chairs throughout the years, last a few years. And then when they when the stuffing starts to fall out, we walk down the street, we like pick out another one, we chat, we we drag it down the street. So that's that's a good resource to have too, is lots of used old, beautiful couches.
SPEAKER_01:And kudos to you both for using the reclaimed wood and used furniture. I am a lover of used furniture. I drive my husband mad, bringing home everything I see on the street. It drives him nuts. But I think we've just become a society of over-consumers and we don't need to buy new furniture all the time. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and we also calling the place rough draft, we just that's kind of the sense we wanted that it's not it's not a museum, it's not a library, it's a it's it's a place that's a little rough around the edges, a little beat up, but just gives you a sense of comfort, like you know, like your living room growing up.
SPEAKER_01:It sounds like a wonderful community you've created. Um, how do you balance curating your books for a wide audience? You have locals, tourists, newcomers, while keeping a distinctive identity and have reader taste surprised you in any way?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think our philosophy from the beginning has been something for everyone, not all things to all people. And so we wanted to have a baseline of opening a place with all of our favorites. So we love coffee, we love uh craft craft beer. We love books. Let's start with the things that we really love and invite people from our community to come share that with us. That goes both ways, I think. That means that people come in and they tell you what you're missing. They tell you what they would love to see. They tell you what they think you should have more of. And so over time, we've tried to listen and respond to the community's desires and needs. And that's definitely affected everything from our draft beer list to the books that we sell and stock. And Amanda probably talked a little bit more about how we've created curated the books.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we've we wanted to start out being, you know, we we had a lot of the categories that you would find in most bookstores. You know, we wanted to be split kind of down the middle between we wanted to focus on on fiction and literary fiction. We've grown and shrunk our kind of genre sections, mystery, sci-fi throughout the years, based on just kind of the way that we've organized the shelves. We I think sell more nonfiction than I thought we would, more uh local interest nonfiction. Um, a lot of our our our readers have really been interested in, or our community's been interested in, you know, social justice and some self self-improvement type books. Uh I see braiding sweet grass on the shelf behind you, and that's number one seller. I think with a lot of indie bookstores, um, that's been just runaway hit of the last few years. The author um is also somewhat local. I think she teaches at Bard, which is nearby, which probably helps as well. But yeah, we've we listened to, you know, our staff or our um our staff suggestions, but also our customers, you know, when they put in special requests, sometimes we are like, oh, you want we'll order one copy for you, and we'll also order one copy for the shelf, because this seems like something that somebody else that we know would enjoy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I worked for a while in our local bookstore here, Bart's Books, and I've got to say, it's much easier to sell books that you have read that you're interested in, uh, rather than a whole lot of books that you've got no interest in at all. I think that that makes it exciting. And what I've found in most indie bookshops is that there are booksellers for individual groups like or genres I should say, or nonfiction and fiction, uh horror, literary fiction, memoir. And I think that makes it a better experience for the customers coming in to look for books, especially if they're gifts. You spoke a little about nonfiction books, but do you get a lot of tourists coming in specifically to buy books about the area, um, you know, the geography, geology, uh the seasons, anything like that, or coffee table books, maps?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. We we have we have a very healthy and decent-sized local authors section. And then we also have another section that's devoted to hiking and the Catskills, uh, the geology of the Hudson Valley, the history of the architecture in in Kingston and and other towns nearby. Um we have books about the reservoirs, we have books about the water systems, uh, we have books about the restaurants and or we have cookbooks from the restaurants in the Hudson Valley. Our our second best-selling book of all time is um Phoenicia Diner Cookbook, which is a nearby um restaurant. Um, so we have definitely um, you know, locals want those books as well. But yeah, our tourists that we see on weekends, um, sometimes they just want them as a souvenir. Um, sometimes we have deeper conversations with them where they we help them find a book about the area that's gonna be a great gift for someone um or that we think would be a great read for them. Um so we we try to have we have those on hand because we, as you as you asked before, we want to we want to be a great place for our locals and our regulars to come every day and we want to curate for them. But we also have, you know, as a business, we want to have some of the eye-catching uh weekender candy type books. Um easy to grab while they're on their way to the register.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. And it's so nice to hear you say you have a local author section. Let's talk about places in Kingston on the Hudson Valley that have personally inspired you creatively or otherwise. And can you share any hidden gems or places with a story behind them? Uh, maybe share some of your favorite restaurants, coffee shops, and hikes for any listeners considering traveling to that area.
SPEAKER_00:Well, first I want to shout out Spotty Dog Books and Ale. Um, they they just celebrated their 20th anniversary, and they are another combo um bookstore bar in a town um called Hudson, which is about 45 minutes north of us. And they were definitely an early inspiration um to us and for our business. So we have to give them it's definitely give them credit for for longevity and um and for inspiring us, and because it's just an absolute um gem in the Hudson Valley. So that would be my first recommendation.
SPEAKER_02:Let's see, some hikes that we love. There's uh so we're we're fairly close to Woodstock, um, which is you know famous for the music festival that did not actually take place in Woodstock. But um it's a small town. It has another amazing bookstore called the Golden Notebook. It has um uh a mountain right there in town called Overlook Mountain, and that is um a hike that we do fairly often. It's probably the closest mountain that we can get to and and summit a peak, you know, fairly, fairly quickly. It's about five miles round trip, but at the top there is an old abandoned hotel, hotel ruins that it's a stone hotel that burned down um many, many years ago. But you can kind of explore, walk around, walk up the steps, look down into the different rooms. And there's also a fire tower, and there's you know, several fire towers, fire towers throughout the Catskills where you can climb up and just take in the amazing view at all different times of year. So that's probab that's one of the ones that we recommend to to visitors mostly. We've also done, we're kind of working our way through the 35 highest peaks in the Catskills, 35 over 3,500 feet. There's so many that are just a little bit more of a drive that we that we really love. One of our first long trips into this area was a backpacking trip on um what's called the Devil's Path, which is 25 miles. Yeah, about a 25-mile hike that we did uh over three days with a friend, and it really reminded us of, you know, it it really made us want to move here after spending a few days. And is that a loop or a point-to-point hike? Point-to-point. So we we took it, we parked and took a taxi to the beginning and then got to our at the end.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, we did that when we were younger.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. The end of Devil's Path is actually very close to one of our favorite breweries, which is West Kill Brewing. And that that is, I think, uh it's not it's it's not hidden in the sense that people don't know about it. They're very well known, but it is physically hidden, like geographically kind of hidden, um, down a long road in the mountains. And it takes takes about an hour to get there from here, but it's just a fun escape to go and and they have amazing beer, they have a lovely tap room, big fire pit, a beautiful lawn. So it's a great place to spend an afternoon.
SPEAKER_00:I would say our another favorite hike of ours is called Huckleberry Point. It's it's just a short 20-minute or so drive from here, and um it's not one of the big peaks, it's not over 3,500 feet, but it's you just get a great um view of the Hudson Valley when you make it to the top on this beautiful uh ledge that pokes out over the over the trees. And we've we've been dog people since we moved up here and and we've we've um taken all three of our pups up there and gotten some great photos.
SPEAKER_01:Are you still able to spend time in the mountains and go hiking?
SPEAKER_00:We aim to get away um at least part of the day on Sundays and Mondays, if we're lucky, and everything's going well and nothing's breaking, and nobody needs us to sub in for them. Um and we can we can see the mountains basically from our from our front porch, um, which, like you said, is a great is a great thing. It calms you as soon as you see them in the morning. Um, so sun, yeah, Sundays and Mondays we'll we try to get out. Um, if not for a you know a big mountain hike. Um, we have some great lakes and trails nearby, and we'll just get out just for a 30, 45-minute walk with our dog.
SPEAKER_01:Do you have big dogs or little dogs?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we have a 50-pound pit bull mix right now. His name is Brutus. So I'd say he's medium-sized, but he has the heart and muscles of a much bigger dog. Um, but he loves he loves hiking.
SPEAKER_01:I bet he does. It's it just always warms my heart when I see a family out with their dog walking. I just I I just love it. Let's talk about books. What's a book you've read recently that made you see something differently in life or in how you run rough draft barren books?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I have been recommending this book um to everyone. Um it's called You Dreamed of Empires. And I'm gonna make sure I get all the details right here. Um it's it's a it's an account of the meeting um between the Spanish and the Aztecs. But it's written much more from the Aztec point of view. Um, the author is Alvaro Enrique, and the translator is Natasha Wimmer. And to read, to go back and explore something that we learned about in history, you know, in fifth grade, um, to read it all over again from a completely different point of view, where the indigenous people have a say-so, where they have dignity, where they're real people, where the women who are involved are actually actually recognized as human beings. Um, it's something that I think about all the time now in the way that we run our business and the way that we interact with our team. Um, it's it speaks to empathy, it speaks to listening, it speaks to considering other points of view. Um, it's really, really fantastic, fun historical fiction, but it also sends you away with a message. And I I just I love that book.
SPEAKER_01:I need to look up that book. It sounds fantastic. And what about you, Amanda?
SPEAKER_02:So I have been recommending this book that came out. It's a nonfiction book, it's a memoir, and it's a it's a very funny book. It's called It's Only Drowning by David Litt. And um, David Litt is a former um, he's a he's a writer, he's a comedy writer, he's a political writer. He was a speechwriter for Barack Obama, actually, I think is what he's best known for. And um he wrote this book about how he lived in DC and then the pandemic hit, and he and his wife moved to this beach house that they had bought in New Jersey to be near her family. So they they move, you know, they left the city like everyone else did during COVID and they went to live in New Jersey, and he kind of fell into a depression because of everything that was going on, and he um decided to take up surfing. And he's not an athletic person, he is not a water person in general. So he's doing something totally out of his comfort zone, something that he's really bad at because you can't be good at surfing when you first start, and it's scary, and it's you know, it's there's there's just um uh this insurmountable thing that you know, you just feel like you're you're getting tiny, tiny, tiny little bit better every day, but it's just this really difficult thing. And a lot of the book is about that. It's about learning how to do something as an adult that um seems hard, seems like past what you can do, and just trying over and over again, and learn learning to look at your failures as learning experiences and as successes and how you can get better from them. It was a it's kind of a good reminder to just think about, you know, doing hard things and doing things that we're not going to be at, and and why that's good for us physically and emotionally and mentally.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds like another good recommendation. Uh, Amanda and Anthony, it has been wonderful chatting with you. And it's great learning all about rough draft bar and books. Uh, it seems like you're really building what you set out to do, and that it's building a community around books, food, drinking, and conversation. It just sounds fabulous. And I wish you continued success and thank you for being on the show.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01:You've been listening to my conversation with Amanda and Anthony Stromowski from Rough Draft Bar and Books. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media. And remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcast.com and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly, on Instagram and Facebook, and on YouTube at The Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcast.com. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, Mandy Jackson Beverly. Theme music provided by Brian Beverly and my personal assistant is Kayleigh Dechinger. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.