Beloved Florida indie bookstore faces backlash after removal of LGBTQ titles

Nichole Murphy had been a volunteer at Bodacious Bookstore since 2023 helping to facilitate book clubs and community events. She had just begun working at the store on April 2 when, just six days later, the book removals started, she said. 

Murphy said she was on the floor the day management began pulling LGBTQ titles from the shelves. She refused to participate in the removals themselves, she said, but was then directed to delete the titles from the store’s inventory system, which she reluctantly did. She spoke out, informing management that the exclusive removal of LGBTQ titles was discriminatory and that it violated the company’s own core mission, vision and values of inclusion and integrity, she said. In resistance, she hid queer books and documented each title removed from the system.

“I refused to pull any books from the shelves. There were never criteria for the books being removed,” she said. “Management started pulling anything that looked queer — books with pictures of two girls kissing on the cover or romance books with main characters that have the same pronouns. These were not sexually explicit or profane materials.”

Murphy, the former employee who asked to remain anonymous, and a current employee who requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation from the Studers, said O’Connor told them that she had a meeting with Rishy Studer, who, O’Connor said, told her to remove the LGBTQ books. O’Conner told the employees that Studer also directed her to then pull the witchcraft books, which the former employees say was an attempt to disguise the targeted queer removals. Murphy resigned on April 22, and books were still being removed up until her last day, she said. At least five of the bookstore’s 10 staff members, including Murphy, told NBC News they have resigned since the books began to be removed.

Regarding the meeting between O’Connor and Rishy Studer, Quint Studer said in an email that Rishy “never mentioned any specific titles or categories” and that “all conversations regarded language in the children’s area.”

O’Connor didn’t respond to a request for comment about the meeting.

According to Melissa Smith, the former manager of Bodacious Bookstore who resigned on April 28 over the store’s alleged censorship practices, it isn’t the first time LGBTQ books have been targeted. 

Smith, who joined Bodacious in 2021, took pride in building its book club community and ensuring the store offered diverse and representative reading materials. She wasn’t in the store when the most recent removals began, as she had been on family and medical leave since early March. However, in July 2022, while she was out on vacation, she said, the store implemented a stealthy policy to exclude LGBTQ books from the children’s section after a customer complaint about the book “Melissa” by Alex Gino, about a young transgender girl. Despite the policy, one book, “My Mommies Love Me,” was mistakenly ordered for Mother’s Day and quickly pulled last month during the broader removal of queer titles, according to Murphy and the two former staffers.

“I even created a banned-book section in the store in Febru because of customers’ demand for these titles,” Smith said. “That’s the whole point of books: to either see yourself represented or understand someone else’s experience.

While the bookstore maintains it isn’t banning books or LGBTQ content, vetting books only to create a “family-friendly” space, Murphy and the two employees who asked to be anonymous also reported the removal of queer greeting cards and pride stickers, including a Mother’s Day card that was mistakenly identified as representing a queer family. Several former employees, authors and community members have questioned whether the definition of “family friendly” includes LGBTQ families. 

Young adult author Ginny Myers Sain was scheduled to visit the store on April 26 for National Independent Bookstore Day to promote her new release, “When the Bones Sing.” However, she canceled her appearance after the store failed to clarify which books were being targeted for removal and what qualified as “family friendly,” later posting a widely shared statement on Facebook condemning the shop for censorship.

“We expect independent bookstores to be leading the charge against this sort of thing, not leaning into it,” she told NBC News. “Readers are counting on us. As someone who writes for teens, I feel that obligation particularly deeply. All kids deserve to be able to walk into their local bookstore and see themselves reflected and celebrated in the books they find there. And everyone knows that, in history, the people banning books have never been the good guys.”

According to former employees, bookstore management is using the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media to vet titles for removal or potential return to the shelves. While educators, librarians and families commonly use the platform to evaluate age ratings in books and media, Murphy and one of the employees who asked to be anonymous argue that it was never intended as a tool to restrict access to books. It remains unclear whether employees will be permitted to special-order queer books or other titles no longer carried in the store, as many report that all orders now require management approval.

“My manager told me that as a private business, they don’t have to sell or cater to certain people, implying queer families can shop elsewhere,” said the current employee who requested anonymity. “From both a political and business standpoint, I think it was a stupid decision to pull the books, because that’s actually more political than not pulling them.”

The employee said none of the removed titles have been returned to shelves, though the Studers contradicted that both in their public statements and to NBC News.