Guide To Kulchur

We are more than just a book store. We are an organization dedicated to improving our community. Guide to Kulchur opened as a bookstore and literary center in 2013. At the beginning of the history of the organization, the guiding principles of the center were grounded in a mission of social entrepreneurship, shared responsibility, and community benefit. The organization originally intended to be a bookstore with a curation of political, historical, and sociological titles. Beginning with the first writing workshops and zine-making events, Guide to Kulchur began to take on a distinctly different purpose. From these early writing workshops the project began to be a makerspace in which artists, writers and literary enthusiasts, specifically from marginalized communities, gathered as a community and envisioned, created, and showcased projects around the store. Guide to Kulchur now operates the only pay-what-you-can bookstore in the state of Ohio. We welcome patrons from across the community to visit us, engage with us, and explore the books and zines.  

The Cleveland Books to Prisoners program was originally started as part of a community center project in 2005, and then taken over by the Cleveland Catholic Worker community upon the closing of this community center space. Guide to Kulchur inherited the program in 2013, and it has been an integral part of our identity and mission since.  Taking over the administration of Books to Prisoners was a natural fit, as Guide to Kulchur intends specifically to facilitate access to literary arts for underserved communities, including the incarcerated. Projects like correspondence for the Books to Prisoners program, organizing stock and transit for books to the prisons, and community events and engagement are a core component of the work we do.