“I have no private life anymore,” she laments with a smile, reflecting on press events from Los Angeles to the independent movie theater just down the street. Wearing a white buttoned shirt and tan clamdigger pants, Blume spoke in late March from a favorite refuge - the roof of her bookstore’s building, looking out on a muggy, cloudy morning over the island city in which she and Cooper live for most of the year. I would love to meet this brilliant mind from my childhood, and have a book signed by her. An email recently sent to the store reads: “Hello there, I would love to know if Judy will be at the store between Thursday and Sunday. The opposite has been true, even though Blume doesn’t come in every day. Blume says that she and her husband, George Cooper, expected around 80% of their customers to be locals and the remainder tourists. “And I think at that age it’s meaningful to see yourself reflected back at you.”īooks & Books, located on a corner just a block off the main drag, has become a destination in Key West, like the former home of Ernest Hemingway and the “Little White House” once favored by Harry Truman. “She just really got what it was like to be that age,” Craig says. There’s also a new documentary, “Judy Blume Forever,” which includes tributes from Molly Ringwald, Tayari Jones, Jason Reynolds and many others. Premiering next week, it stars Abby Ryder Fortson as the preteen from New Jersey with a lot of questions about religion, boys and her own body. For the first time, one of her books has been adapted into a major Hollywood film: “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (“Edge of Seventeen”).
Now 85, Blume has never been forgotten, but she is currently enjoying renewed interest. “I remind them of their childhood,” she likes to say. She is also a literary celebrity of the rarest kind, who has not only sold millions of books, but moved young readers so profoundly that, as adults, they approach her in tears and thank her. She is an eager promoter of other people’s works, whether on social media or at her store. (AP) - At Books & Books, the nonprofit store Judy Blume and her husband have run for the past seven years, you will find her own work in various sections: from general fiction, among the other “B”-named authors, to a shelf dedicated exclusively to her - a name unto herself.įor more than 50 years, since her breakthrough novel “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret,” Blume has been a proud member of the literary community and a citizen of special status.
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