This queer couple is working toward their dream of a Little Gay Bookstore

Reese Steiner, a fourth-year English major at Ohio State, and her girlfriend, Lauren Branch, a recent graduate from North Central State, didn’t plan on testing their relationship by opening a business.

“If we get through this without breaking up or anything, then we’re golden,” Branch told The Lantern, the Ohio State newspaper.

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The business is a bookstore and coffee spot that the couple are calling Little Gay Bookstore and Queer Beans, devoted to queer literature and providing a safe space for the queer community of all ages in Columbus’ Short North gayborhood.

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“Columbus is definitely great, and we’re definitely grateful that we have any queer spaces. But I think it’s important and time that there is a sober one,” Steiner said. “I’m also really excited to do the coffee shop and just have a space where people can exist, be sober, just hanging out.”

The pair grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, where Steiner describes the vibe as “lukewarm homophobic.”

“I just spent most of my life questioning,” Steiner said. “I think if there was a space like what we’re trying to do, that could have really helped me find some answers.”

The two came up with the idea on a trip to Los Angeles, where they were browsing for queer literature at a downtown bookstore.

“We wandered around for a bit and could find no queer section,” the couple wrote on their website, Little Gay Bookstore. “It was a big place, so we thought we missed it, assuming they had one to begin with. We eventually asked a bookkeeper where we could find it. We were shocked when she informed us they didn’t have one.”

That moment inspired a conversation about building their own gay bookstore to ensure people have access online or in-person to books by, for, and about LGBTQ+ people and their stories.

“You can browse here knowing that each and every book is brought to you by your community, and for your community,” the couple wrote about the project.

Steiner and Branch are searching for the perfect spot in Short North for their Little Gay Bookstore and Queer Beans outpost, which they plan on operating as a nonprofit, with proceeds shared with groups like Kaleidoscopic Youth Center, a local organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth.

In the meantime, the store is online and mobile, with Steiner and Branch operating pop-ups with a curated selection of books and queer ephemera.

Steiner has also started an Ohio State student organization, the Little Gay Book Club, which meets every other Thursday to discuss queer literature.

“This place definitely would have been very life-changing for me specifically, to have a space like that in my youth,” Branch said. “I think it would have kind of sped up the process of figuring myself out.”

“We want young, closeted or questioning people to walk into this store and know that everything is okay; that they are not alone; that they have an entire community to rely on.”