LITERARY ARTS GEMS

@PGHCITYPAPER.COM attention, she lays back down on a bed on the floor and falls right to sleep: a perfect bookstore dog.

She suits the atmosphere of the store, which is precise and well-curated without

“I built all the shelves, all the counters.”

Bottom Feeder Books opened its doors around six months ago at the end of July. Before then, McLennan lived and worked all over the country, including at Chop Suey Books, a used bookstore in Richmond, Va. once profiled by The New York Times for its wide-ranging selection. “I just learned so much more there,” he says of the experience. “You get a lot of students coming in and seeing things they’re reading, one thing leads to another … You read interviews with all these painters and they talk about writers, you read interviews with these filmmakers and they talk about painters and poets,” he says.

After leaving Richmond, he moved to Brooklyn to paint, showing in galleries in the city. Eventually, he took a job at Stumptown Coffee – one that brought him to Portland, Ore., which he left in 2020 for Pittsburgh. He knew at once when he got here that he wanted to open a bookstore, but it took a while.

“I had thousands of books already, but I kept buying, and saving money, and trying to find the right spot.”

McLennan sources Bottom Feeder’s stock from all over: trips to Ohio, Maryland, and West Virginia, library sales, and even a few unnamed spots in Pittsburgh. “Since I’ve been open, I’ll