Last night, a fire destroyed the storage building at Lioness Books in Leander, wiping out furniture, tools, books, and inventory just days before owner Sarah Ambrus was set to move into the brick-and-mortar location she’s been working toward for years. Move-in was scheduled for this Sunday. The grand opening, April 11. A planned appearance at the Austin Texas Book Trail on April 4 is also now on hold.

Thankfully no one was hurt, but everything she needed to open is gone.

I want to tell you why this matters to us personally, and then I want to ask you to help.

Back in the summer of 2025, I walked into a sleek black trailer parked outside Red Horn Coffee and met Sarah for the first time. Lioness Books was entirely mobile then, operating out of that trailer, showing up at spots around Austin and nearby communities. Sarah is a former high school teacher. We talked about books, about indie publishing, about the freedom to read as a democratic value. It felt like a natural conversation. I handed her a copy of Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age, the collection Rachel Armes-McLaughlin and I had just finished publishing. A few weeks later, when my bulk order came in, I dropped off copies for her to stock.

Lioness Books became the first bookstore to carry our little poetry collection. That means something to a small, independent press. It definitely meant something to us.

I wrote about that first meeting last July, and apparently it meant something to Sarah too, because she listed that post as one of the spotlight articles on her own website. That’s the kind of small-business, grassroots relationship this project runs on.

Sarah is a genuinely wonderful, caring person who has spent years building Lioness Books into something real, starting from a trailer, growing a community, earning a permanent home. She was days away from opening that door. What happened Wednesday night is the kind of setback that can end a small business before it ever gets the chance to prove itself.

But we’re not going to let that happen.

Here’s how you can help:

If you’re able to donate, there’s a GoFundMe set up for rebuilding costs. Every dollar helps: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-rebuild-lioness-books

If you are local to the Austin area and have books to donate, the Leander Chamber of Commerce is accepting them on behalf of Lioness Books at 103 N. West Drive, Leander, TX.

And if you can’t do either of those things right now, that’s okay. But please take a moment to share the link. Post it on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you have people who care about independent bookstores, small business, and local culture. That costs nothing, takes just a few seconds, and it matters.

One thing I know about the indie book community is that we take care of each other. Sarah was there for us when we were first getting started with the poetry project. let’s be there for her now.

Lioness Books deserves to open. Let’s help make sure it does.

—Nick Allison, co-editor, Record of Dissent / What We Hold On To