After graduating from the U of M with an English degree last year, Dylan Yuen now operates the bookstore Bound to Please in the North End of Winnipeg. They have spent the last several months collecting books, contacting authors and painting the room pink with their partner.

Yuen’s goal for the store is to provide a community space for the surrounding neighbourhoods, citing the lack of dedicated leisure spaces for youth to read and study. They began the initiative by hosting a silent reading and discussion group, as well as a book binding workshop this month, with the intent for more workshops to come. They are also planning to host children’s book readings, including some with drag performers.

“We have the Garden City Mall, but it’s not as active,” Yuen explained. “And stores keep closing and then coming back. And it’s not as popular as Polo Park, but then that’s in a light industrial area. So there isn’t really anything for teens, young adults and kids to do in our area.”

As for products, Bound to Please specializes in romance novels. As a student, Yuen often found the genre was overly dismissed compared to other literary works due to its formulaic nature. However, many novels exhibit varied approaches to the format —such as the series of letters sent between the protagonists in one of Yuen’s gateways into the romance genre, the science-fiction novel This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

“Romance books get discounted for following [a] framework and following a certain flow,” they elaborated. “But so many other kinds of books do that […] and that’s not a bad thing. It means that if you enjoyed this other book, you know you’re probably going to enjoy this same book.”

The shelves feature used books Yuen collected, as well as a collection of new and primarily local works. Some of them were supplied through connections Yuen has made at the annual Prairie Comics Festival, and many partnerships came about from writers and artists reaching out to Bound to Please after discovering them on social media. The author B. Mackenzie, who inquired after participating in the silent reading group, was especially excited that Bound to Please is the first physical bookstore to ever sell her books.

One of Yuen’s favourite novels in the local display is Oath by Kate Butler, a gay romance novel about a baron and his guard exchanging letters. Another is the queer fantasy novel A Damsel and a Demon by Allie Leigh, a touching and heartbreaking sequel to A Sorceress and Scones.

For future events and updates from Bound to Please, visit @b2pbooks on Instagram.