The Gnu’s Room is a nonprofit bookstore and arts center located at 414 South Gay Street in Auburn, AL. The Gnu’s Room has more than 30,000 used books for sale (and some new books by local and regional authors). All of our revenue comes from books sales and donations.
Built in the early 1950s, The Gnu’s Room was originally a grocery store, the first retail building outside the downtown area. In 1998, Bill Sherling rented the building and began transforming it into a used bookstore.
Current owner Tina Tatum started working for Sherling in 2006 and eventually took over the leadership of the store in 2007. In 2011, The Gnu’s Room became a nonprofit, with a mission to serve as a center for literature, music and other arts in the Auburn area.
The Gnu’s Room also has a publishing imprint, Solomon & George Publishers. Its first two books are Chinaberries and Crows: An Anthology, a collection of writing by people with connections to Auburn and East Alabama; and The Quilt and the Poetry of Alabama Music, a book-length essay by Frye Gaillard and Kathryn Scheldt that pays tribute to the literary legacy of Alabama’s songwriters.
In 2013, The Gnu’s Room plans to start the Gnu Mobile, a mobile arts, music and literacy education service that will bring resources directly to children in the communities around Auburn.
