I was only 17 when I moved into an apartment with two friends in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. This was in the '90s, the neighborhood was full of artists and musicians and weirdos. It was still rough back then, but it was full of the kind of energy that was infectious when you're 17 and on your own for the first time.

It wasn't long after moving in that I wandered up Evergreen Avenue where our apartment was toward Damen, one of the two main thoroughfares that defined the neighborhood. Just up the street from us was a beautiful red brick three-flat with a plaque outside announcing it as the former home of Nelson Algren, the storied chronicler of working-class Chicago. And just up Evergreen from that landmark was another: Quimby's Bookstore. Or, as it was called at the time, Quimby's Queer Store.

Walking into Quimby's at 17—still so green even though I thought of myself as more—was a revelation. I'd been going to punk shows and buying zines for years at that point, but I'd never seen a store with so many. Shelf after shelf, from tiny photocopied perzines to (relatively) big budget affairs like Ben is Dead and Speed Kills. Zines lined the walls, books filled tables. From DIY music coverage and poetry chapbooks to truly out there political, cultural, and, yes, sexual publications, if you could think it, they had it at Quimby's. The store was still owned by Steve Svymbersky back then and he'd be behind the counter welcoming you every time you walked in. I walked in a lot. All of this, just two blocks from my apartment.

Quimby's changed my life.

Today is Independent Bookstore Day, a day where we celebrate and support stores like Quimby's: stores that don't shy away from ideas, that support presses big and small, and that build community around them.

There's nothing more crucial right now than independent bookstores staying alive. Ideas are under attack by Executive Order, books are being banned in schools and libraries across the country, and tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg are declaring books to have "no economic value" as they hoover them up for training their AIs.

We need indie bookstores more than ever.

And they need you.

It's completely safe to say that I would not have built the life I've lived without being two blocks from Quimby's when I was young and broke and desperate to find a place exactly like it: a place where new ideas where everywhere.

There's probably not one single place that shaped me more than Quimby's did. I owe a lot to Steve and later to Eric and Liz, and I owe a lot to all independent bookstores, who have stocked my magazines and sold my books for a very long time now.

But more than that, they've sustained me. When I travel, I always end up at some bookstore, grabbing new things off the shelf. There are some I will always visit whenever I'm back, like the incredible Last Bookstore and Reparations Club in LA, the singular Left Bank Books in Seattle, or the indie giants Powell's in Portland and Book People in Austin. There have been so many over so many years, I am forgetting most of them, but I loved all of them.

Here in Chicago, beyond Quimbys, stores like Women & Children First, the Book Cellar, Bucket O' Blood, and Semicolon are stalwarts. Personally, I'll be visiting Bookends & Beginnings today. If you want to find a store in your area, the Independent Bookstore Day site has a handy map to find a participating store.

Even if there isn't an indie near you or you can't make it out today, you can order online from many stores or from Bookshop.org, the online bookstore that gives a percentage to indies.

However you do it, today go support a bookstore. Put a few dollars in the till and walk out with a new book, a new idea, a new chance to change your life.