J. Hunter Bennett — More Punk Than the Public Library
J. Hunter Bennett discusses his book about a DIY punk rock bookstore in DC, where the city's underground music scene meets the world of free public books.
Why we picked this
A DC-specific story that works as a broader argument about what community institutions look like when they're built from the bottom up — the intersection of punk ethics and the book-sharing impulse turns out to be surprisingly illuminating.
J. Hunter Bennett brings his debut book More Punk Than the Public Library: The Adventures of a Little Free Punk Rock Bookstore in Washington, DC to Politics and Prose — which is, fittingly, one of the bookstores that helped make the city’s literary ecosystem what it is. Bennett’s project began with a Little Free Library stuffed with punk zines and paperbacks, and grew into something considerably stranger and more meaningful.
The book sits at an unexpected cultural crossroads: DC hardcore and the long tradition of free public access to reading. Bennett explores how the aesthetics and ethics of punk — anti-commercial, communal, DIY — translate into a vision of what a bookstore or library could be. It is a local story, but also a story about how communities build their own infrastructure.
The event is free and open to the public at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC.