Hearthside Books owner Olga Sofia Lijó Seráns inside the business’s downtown storefront on June 16, 2025. (Photo by Yvonne Krumrey/KTOO)

This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.

A Juneau bookstore turns 50 this year. Earlier this month, it was voted one of the nation’s top 10 best independent bookstores by USA Today. 

Olga Sofia Lijó Seráns took over Hearthside Books in 2022, but she got into the book business as a librarian in Juneau nearly two decades ago after arriving from Northern Spain.  

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/TV_Olga.mp3

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Olga Sofia Lijó Seráns: I love Waiting for the Weather. Eric Forrer’s memoir. It just has so much information about Alaska without being ponderous. Actually, it’s pretty funny. So it’s a great way to just have a very good look at Alaska without thinking that you are studying on it. 

My name is long. It’s Olga Sophia Lijó Seráns, and I am the owner of Hearthside Books and Toys. I was approached about buying Hearthside Books around three years ago, about this time of the year, by somebody else who thought that I could be a good match, because Hearthside  had been for sale for a while, and well, nobody in this town wanted it to close. 

I’m not sure why people thought about me. I have my guesses. I’m a book person. I’ve been always very active in the community. Since I arrived in Juneau in 2007, I got my master’s in library science. I already had two degrees in similar subjects, and then I became a public librarian, and then I became librarian for the Legislative Affairs agency. 

So between that and the fact that I’m always around books, I guess it was not very strange that somebody would have thought about me. 

What brought me to Juneau in the first place was love. My then love interest invited me for a holiday in 2006 and that was it. He was definitely a love interest, but Juneau just closed the deal. 

The big surprise was bestsellers and having to be on top of those changes almost daily. So it makes it a little bit terrifying, because you’re always having to be thinking about what’s coming next and what’s going to be people’s next interest. But on the other hand, it’s also exhilarating, a lot of fun. Will that set of books that were really, really hot two weeks ago arrive in time for being still of interest when they get here?

Hearthside is turning 50 on September 19. It was open in September 19, 1975. So I wasn’t thinking about what that would mean when I initially bought the store. But it has become more and more obvious that people in Juneau consider Hearthside a legacy. 

When you have three generations of the same family coming to you and saying, “You know, my mom used to bring me to Hearthside as a kid, and now I’m bringing my own kids here too.” It kind of makes you realize how important an independent bookstore is still in a community like Juneau.