The owners of Two Friends Bookstore Cafe in Bentonville want to take the area’s literary arts scene to the next level, while also providing free or low-cost books to everyone in the community.

Rachel Stuckey Slaton and Monica Diodati recently created a nonprofit called Two Friends Community Books, allowing them the opportunity to expand on the community-building efforts they’ve already been doing at the bookstore. 

“A huge focus of this nonprofit is accessibility to books and literary arts,” Stuckey Slaton said. “It opens up some doors in achieving those goals.”

The nonprofit will focus on three goals: a donation-based bookstore in Springdale, an author speaker series, and book donations to schools and libraries.

“The why behind this is when you look at a person’s life outcomes when they have an established habit of reading for themselves — not just for school or work — all of these life outcomes drastically increase,” Stuckey Slaton said. “Having books in your home that you see on your shelves that helps establish that love of reading, this is all in service to that.”

The timing of the nonprofit’s creation was influenced by an offer from the owner of a business next door to Two Friends in 8th Street Market. Rafael Rios, the owner of Yeyo’s El Alma de Mexico, approached them to be a part of his concept for an arts-focused cafe and community space in downtown Springdale, opening in early 2025.

The space, Casa Magnolia, will feature a cafe with coffee and ice cream and a Yeyo’s food truck parked outside the building. Alongside the cafe, Two Friends Community Books will offer a pay-what-you-can bookstore. The building’s upstairs will be a space for workshops and other art events.

Stuckey Slaton and Diodati hope that the Casa Magnolia cafe and bookstore becomes a place where the community can come to learn, relax and read. If someone wants to take a book home from their store, they can make a donation in any amount.

“We’ll have suggested donations, but you can put in $1 — or you can put $50,” Diodati said.

A strong focus of the pay-what-you-can bookstore is to provide books to people in all life stages from baby to adult, as well as in multiple languages. They hope to provide books to people in their native languages, whether that be Spanish or Marshallese.

While Two Friends already does occasional author events, Stuckey Slaton and Diodati hope to kick it up a notch within their nonprofit. They hope grant money will allow them to host more events, bring in nationally recognized authors, and serve a more diverse audience. In keeping with the mission to increase access to books, they are working to provide a book giveaway component to each event.

“The Fayetteville library and other organizations already have big festivals bringing authors in, but we want to piggyback on all of that work and really make it a region better known for the literary arts as well as the visual arts and cycling,” Diodati said.

She added that they have a great partnership with the Bentonville Public Library, and plan to host some of their author events in its new community room.

“This region has so much to offer now and there’s this historic tradition of storytelling in the Ozarks that I think is so special. … It feels like bringing things full circle in Bentonville,” Stuckey Slaton added.

Another goal of Two Friends Community Books is to provide new books to both schools and libraries that don’t have a lot of funding. Stuckey Slaton said they want to support the hard work that librarians are doing by helping with the financial burden of paying for new release hardcovers that are coming out.

“And then same with public schools — teachers shouldn’t have to pay for classroom materials, and we want to be able to say yes to those requests when they come in,” she said.

Two Friends Community Books is currently accepting donations to help fund author events and book donations. Currently, they’ve raised just over $3,200 of their $11,000 goal.

They are not currently accepting book donations until the bookstore in Springdale opens. Events and other fundraisers will be posted to the Two Friends website when scheduled.