Books
Meet Your Bookseller!
Leila Louhaichy
Photo: Grace Roselli
In this iteration of our column featuring our favorite booksellers around the world, Ursula introduces you to Leila Louhaichy, manager of the Hauser & Wirth Bookshop in New York.
How did you decide to devote yourself to the book and archive trade?
It's a tale as old as time, but l've always loved reading. I also come from a family of undiagnosed hoarders, so collecting-as-practice is genetic. While I was in school for creative writing, I took a book arts class with the artist and publisher Leonard Seastone and I have been happily falling down the rabbit hole since.
What's your favorite title in your personal collection?
A favorite book is the first edition of The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes, published in 1955. I came across it at a library sale in upstate New York. I also collect ephemera and have to nominate a 1979 subway ad for WPLJ 95.5—a defunct local radio station—that I have. It shows an illustrated Debbie Harry listening to a heart-shaped pink radio.
Tell us about the rarest or most interesting item you've ever sold.
When I worked at Printed Matter, we once received an artist's book submission from a Taiwanese artist duo named Sid and Geri, called Georgina's Facebook. The publication is an extension of a video series that the artists made detailing a love story between a fictional character, Georgina, and her lover, King. The book takes the form of a plastic head (imagine the girl from the Wendy's logo as a blow-up doll) that is held together with magnets. Once you open the head, a small accordion zine with images and screenshots from the videos is revealed.
© 2021 Sid and Geri. Photo courtesy Printed Matter, Inc.
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Located at 443 West 18th Street, New York, Hauser & Wirth Bookshop features some of the most thought-provoking writers and artists in the world along with a selection of recommended publications from friends of the magazine and contributors.