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By Javacia Harris Bowser | The Birmingham Times
On any given week in the Birmingham area, readers gather in coffee shops, community spaces or on computer screens to discuss books. But the conversations are about much more than plot twists and favorite characters. For many members, book clubs have become a way to find friendship, strengthen community and celebrate Black voices that have too often been overlooked. From traditional monthly gatherings to virtual communities that connect readers across the region, Birmingham-area book clubs are creating spaces where literature sparks conversation, relationships flourish and Black authors find enthusiastic audiences.
She Well Read
After college friends Alana Baumann and Samra Michael graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), everything about their lives felt different.
“We both kind of were in this space of starting our adult lives, and that looked a lot different from when we were in college,” Baumann said. Even the act of forging friendships had changed. But Baumann and Michael found the anchor and the community they needed in their love for reading.
Michael wanted to start a book club after college. Baumann was looking to start a podcast. The two combined the ideas, and She Well Read was born.
“I thought, I’m sure we’re not the only people who are feeling this way, seeking community, and wanting you back into reading,” Baumann said. And she was right. Described as a “book club podcast,” She Well Read boasts over 120,000 downloads and over 42,000 followers on TikTok. The podcast has partnered with several brands, including Bookshop.org, the stationery company Be Rooted, and the popular sustainable clothing store basic.
The podcast element is not the only thing that makes She Well Read different from other book clubs.
“My favorite part of our book club is the slow pace,” Michael said. With She Well Read, there’s no pressure to read a stack of books each month. Baumann and Michael dedicate an entire season to a single book, sprinkling in bonus episodes along the way, such as author interviews or book festival recaps.
“You can be kind of turned off by other book clubs that feel like an English class or a master’s thesis,” Michael said. “We were just two girls, fresh out of college, who wanted to have fun and read a book together.”
Alana Baumann and Samra Michael, pictured below, dedicate an entire season to a single book, sprinkling in bonus episodes along the way. (Amarr Croskey Photos, For The Birmingham Times)Fostering Connections
The She Well Read book club podcast kicked off with “Text Me When You Get Home” by Kayleen Schaefer, a book about female friendships and a fitting way to launch an online book club focused on fostering connections.
To further cultivate community, Baumann and Michael stay in constant communication with listeners via voice memos, TikTok and other social media platforms. Listeners get to vote on the next read and Baumann and Michael have an in-person meetup planned for later this summer.
And one of their favorite ways to connect with other readers is at literary events at local bookstores like Thank You Books or the ArtLit events at the Birmingham Museum of Art. She Well Read was also a podcast partner at the wildly popular 2026 Black Romance Book Fest in Atlanta. This year’s festival drew over 3500 attendees.
“People love to say that Black people don’t read, Black women don’t read, that we don’t support Black writers,” Baumann said, “but no, we do, and we spend a lot of money doing it too, and we will stand in long lines for two hours to meet our favorite authors and get our book signed. We will show up.”
Baumann and Michael are showing up for writers in a big way with a new partnership. She Well Read is collaborating with Gatekeeper Press to offer an aspiring author a publishing contract.
“We’re wrapping it into our 7-year anniversary, which I’m so excited about because it feels like we’re able to give back,” Michael said.
Like many people, Baumann and Michael turn to reading to turn off the cares of the world.
“Reading has always been an escape,” Baumann said. “When I’m reading, I feel like I’m watching a show or watching a movie.”
For Michael, who grew up in Birmingham, reading has always been a source of comfort.
“As a young person, I remember I’d go over to my aunt’s house for the summer with my cousins, and she would force us to have a 30-minute reading time,” Michael recalled. “And we would not be able to talk or play, we would just have to sit and read, and honestly, once I got past the 30 minutes, I was like, I could be here all day!”
But for both Baumann and Michael, reading has become so much more.
“You can connect with so many people just from reading,” Baumann said.
Once Upon a Wine
A look at the Once Upon a Wine Instagram account quickly reveals this Birmingham-based group is not your typical book club. Scroll through @onceuponawine_bookclub, and you’ll see magazine-worthy photographs of Black women in color-coordinated fashionable frocks and outfits.
But Alicia Gettys, who co-founded the club with her sister Faith Foster in 2020, emphasized that the women of this group have both style and substance.
“Understand that what you see in the pictures is great, but we actually read, we actually have conversations,” Gettys said.
And the types of books they read run the gamut.
“There really isn’t a genre that we have not read,” Gettys said. They’ve read romance novels by Kennedy Ryan, thrillers by John Marrs and novels by British writer Lisa Jewell. They’ve read “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden and the critically acclaimed speculative fiction novel “Sky Full of Elephants” by Cebo Campbell.
Once Upon a Wine Book Club reads a different book each month and meets every third Sunday to discuss their reads. Once a year, they also take a reading retreat. These getaways have taken the group members as far as Italy and Mexico. They’ve also gone to Gatlinburg, Tennessee; Destin, Florida; San Francisco, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Next year, they’re heading to Barcelona, Spain.
Once Upon a Wine Book Club has been featured on Essence.com and is so popular that there’s a waitlist of women who want to join the group, which currently caps membership at 30.
Birmingham’s Once Upon a Wine Book Club reads a different book each month and meets every third Sunday to discuss their reads. Once a year, they also take a reading retreat. (Provided)A Space for Black Women
Gettys and her sister came up with the idea for Once Upon a Wine in 2019.
“When I looked in the Birmingham space, I saw there was a lack of Black women being able to come together that wasn’t at a restaurant or a lounge or a club,” Gettys said. “We had thought about maybe just doing a social club, but I wanted it to be more than that, and we both have a love for books.”
So, in 2020, they planned to host their first meeting. Then the pandemic hit. The first gathering, held in March 2020, took place online. Once Upon a Wine had its first in-person meetup in September of 2020 at Avondale Park.
“We were all spread out,” Gettys recalled. “Luckily, there wasn’t that much going on at the park, so all you saw was like 15 girls randomly spaced out on the steps in Avondale Park. It was hilarious.”
But Gettys and Foster are serious about the community they’re seeking to cultivate.
“What really kind of hit home for me was that we as Black women take on so many roles. We are the caregivers, we’re the mothers, we’re the wives, we’re the people in corporate America,” said Getty, who works in finance at an information technology company by day and is a content creator after hours. “But for just one Sunday out of the month, I just want us to relish in the fact that we’re Black women. I want us to be able to cry, I want us to be able to laugh.”
She wants Black women to chat about good books over a great bottle of wine.
“It’s a space for you to put your guard down and be able to have conversations with other Black women that you don’t know,” she said, adding that the women aren’t strangers for long.
“So many friendships that have been formed from this book club,” Gettys said. “When I’m scrolling Instagram or TikTok, I see they’re getting together for coffee, or they got invited to the bridal shower or the baby shower.”
Members rotate hosting meetings. Hosts are tasked with choosing a theme to match the book of the month. For June, the group read “Second Swing” by Nicole Devonne, a second-chance romance with golfing as the backdrop. The book club meeting will take place at a local golf club, and the ladies will sport their best golf-inspired outfits.
For Gettys, an influencer with nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 85,000 on TikTok, incorporating fashion and photography into the meetups made sense. But also spoke to the mission of celebrating Black women.
“We go out, and we buy all these nice clothes, and then there’s nowhere to wear them,” she said, “so let’s have a reason to wear all these nice clothes!”
Navigating corporate America, content creation and being a wife and mother, Gettys’s schedule is packed. But she always makes time for books. Whether she’s listening to audiobooks in the car or reading for 20 minutes to wind down before bed.
Reading is Fundamental
Gettys’s love of reading has been a lifelong affair thanks to her mother, who always encouraged her to pick up a book. As a girl in Texas, she passed a test that allowed her to enter first grade at just four years old. She credits her reading skills for this feat. She’s passed on this love of reading to her 3-year-old son, Alexander, who reads three books each night.
“If you let him, he will read five or six,” she said.
For Gettys, the phrase “reading is fundamental” isn’t just a decades-old slogan. It’s something she truly believes.
“I think a lot of times when younger kids are struggling in math or science or history, it has everything to do with reading,” she said. “So, reading has always been fundamental.”
The Behind the Ink book festival, held last year at the Harbert Center in Downtown Birmingham, featured New York Times best-selling author Kennedy Ryan and drew nearly 700 attendees. (Provided)From Me-Time to Big Time
K. Reshay Williams started Me-Time Book Club in 2011 at an Olive Garden in Tuscaloosa with just a handful of friends. Today, the book club is a nonprofit organization that runs a host of community service projects and hosts one of the biggest book festivals in the state — Behind the Ink.
Last year’s festival, held at the Harbert Center in Downtown Birmingham, featured New York Times best-selling author Kennedy Ryan and drew nearly 700 attendees.
“Creating something unique that people enjoy is definitely the motivation,” Williams said. “Literacy is so important within our community, and I’m grateful to add to it.”
Vendors at Behind the Ink include not only authors, entrepreneurs, and other creatives but also local literacy organizations.
Me-Time Book Club, which took steps to become a nonprofit organization in 2023, collects books for a Little Free Library at Bowers Park in Tuscaloosa. They donate “Blessings Bags” to homeless shelters in Birmingham and surrounding areas. They have also donated time and resources to the Salvation Army, the Lupus Foundation, and Grace House Ministries, which provides housing for girls in foster care in Alabama.
The Behind the Ink team is taking a break in 2026, but Williams said the festival will return in 2027, and she’s hard at work to bring in another big-name author.
In the meantime, she’ll keep reading.
“Reading is therapeutic,” she said. “It gives me the opportunity to relax and take my mind off of everyday life.”
She’ll also keep meeting with the members of Me-Time Book Club.
“It enriches my life by obtaining a different perspective of what I’ve read,” Williams said when asked what she enjoys most about her book club. “Every book and its characters are interpreted differently, and it’s exciting to discuss this with people.”
One of the Birmingham chapters of Go On Girl Book Club met to discuss “Harlem Rhapsody”. (Provided)The Go On Girl! Book Club
Over 100 members of the Go On Girl! (GOG) Book Club converged in Birmingham June 11-14 for the group’s annual Authors Award Weekend.
The Go On Girl! Book Club is a nationally recognized nonprofit reading club committed to fostering an awareness of and appreciation for the literary works by authors of the Black Diaspora.
“The mission of the GOG Book Club is to support Black reading and Black writing,” said Irene Little, who launched the first GOG chapter in Birmingham. “I am old enough to know that some Black literature has already been lost. If we do not support Black Literature, it will be erased.”
Founded in 1991 in New York, the organization now has more than 30 chapters consisting of more than 300 members in 18 states across the country, including four chapters in Alabama. Each month, the club chapters read and discuss a book by a Black author. Members then write reviews and letters of encouragement that they send to the authors and their publishing houses. The reading list is vast, covering a wide range of genres.
At the annual Author Awards celebration, the group recognizes the artistic achievements of members’ favorite authors from the previous year’s reading list. The annual Author Awards, which began in 1992 as a small event in Brooklyn, New York, has evolved into a 3-day event that has traveled the United States from east to west as well as outside the U.S. to Jamaica, West Indies, and Toronto, Canada, Little shared. This year, the event took place in Birmingham and included a bus trip to Montgomery to visit the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) museums.
The awards dinner, held Saturday, June 13, at the Sheraton Hotel, drew 184 attendees who gathered to celebrate writers such as Victoria Christopher Murray, author of “Harlem Rhapsody,” and Cebo Campbell, author of “Sky Full of Elephants.”
In addition to the top author recognitions, the club also gives a $1,000 unpublished author award that writers can apply for on the GOG website and a $1,000 aspiring literary scholar award to a student at a historically Black college or university (HBCU) or other college or university. To qualify, students must submit an essay on the power of the written word. The Birmingham chapters have also worked together to donate books to local prisons.
Little joined the Go On Girl! Book Club in 1999 while she was living in Washington, D.C. In 2004, she moved to Birmingham, and two years later, she led the charge to charter the first chapter in Alabama.
“Our membership grew rapidly,” she said. They soon exceeded the recommended 12-member chapter size. So, a second chapter was formed. In 2014, a third Birmingham chapter was launched, and recently, a chapter in Montgomery was formed.
Though Go On Girl! is much more than a book club, it still offers the opportunity to read and discuss books with others who love good stories.
“For me, reading is more than words and plots,” Little said. “Reading takes me places I have never visited. Reading introduces me to people I will never meet in person. Reading entertains me like an A-rated Broadway performance.”
And discussing what she’s read makes the experience even richer.
“Having a discussion about a book provides a broader view of the story, the plot, the culture and the characters,” Little said.
Alana Baumann, left, and Samra Michael at the Little Professor Bookstore in Homewood. (Amarr Croskey, For The Birmingham Times)Try Something New
For people looking to get into reading, Baumann recommends starting with the same genres you enjoy watching on television. Yet, she said, don’t be afraid to try something new.
“Dip your toe into everything,” she said. “If it’s something you don’t think you would like, you’d be really surprised.”
She, for example, didn’t expect to enjoy reading thrillers, and now she’s hooked. She also reads a lot of young adult literature.
“It kind of taps into that younger self, that younger child, that still lives in you,” she said.
That said, Michael stresses that no one should force themselves to read a book they’re not enjoying.
“Don’t be afraid to put a book down,” Michael said. “If you’re not amped about picking it back up, and it’s like this weight on your shoulders to finish it, just put it back on the shelf, and if you want to come back to it, I’m sure you will, and if you never feel like getting back to it, that’s great too. Maybe you were only meant to read the first chapter of this book.”
Be willing to explore different formats, too, Baumann said.
When she’s on her way to work, Baumann, a data analyst, enjoys listening to audiobooks.
“When I’m trying to wind down at night and not be on a screen, I’m popping up with a physical book,” she added. “If I’m on a plane or something, and I have my tablet, I’m probably reading an e-book. Explore the different formats and find what really fits for you.”
For the members of these book clubs, reading is about more than finishing the next title on a list. It’s about finding connection, discovering new outlooks and building spaces where Black stories are celebrated. As these clubs continue to grow in Birmingham and beyond, they serve as a reminder that books have the power not only to entertain and educate, but also to build community. And while each book club has its own personality, meeting style, and reading preferences, they share a common purpose: bringing people together through stories. By fostering friendships, encouraging candid conversations and championing the work of Black authors, these groups are showing that the impact of a good book reaches far beyond its final page.
College friends Alana Baumann, left, and Samra Michael graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After school, they started a podcast and book club, She Well Read. (Amarr Croskey, For The Birmingham Times)
