Wise Words: Emma Hamlett
Emma Hamlett’s pathway to become a successful bookseller in the heart of Durham city, with a view of the Cathedral from the front step, has been a winding journey that would make a great story of its own.
Her two-storey bookshop, Collected, has over 10,000 books and specialises in women’s writing to help counter-balance the predominance of male authors throughout publishing.
Brought up in Saddleworth in the North West, she loved books as a young child, particularly Jill Murphy and Shirley Hughes. As she got older, the Nancy Drew mysteries also had a special attraction as Emma had red hair like Nancy, who she considered a very cool hero, and was probably the start of a long-term fondness for crime fiction. In her teenage years, inspired by that BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, she started to read classics.
After school she studied Modern History at Oxford University, followed by a Masters in Museum Studies at Manchester University. Her museum career started in South Lincolnshire before a move to the Hartlepool Museum team in 2008 where her role involved leading teams in learning, collections, and exhibitions across the town’s museum and art gallery.
Emma said: “I love getting under the skin of projects and their history. One of my proudest roles was my work at Durham University where I was responsible for managing the objects loaned in for the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition and curating the Magna Carta anniversary exhibition. It was a chance of a lifetime to work on such extraordinary pieces of our history and with such brilliant academic experts.”
This experience resulted in her becoming a specialist in temporary exhibitions and she used this knowledge in her next role at York Museums Trust. Eventually, she managed the collections and curatorial teams across York Castle Museum, the Yorkshire Museum, and York Art Gallery.
Emma said: “I was running a team with such a fantastic amount of knowledge it was a real pleasure to get their expertise out and into the stories we told about the collections, for the visiting public.”
But in 2020 Covid took its toll on museums all over the country with the loss of admissions income placing even greater financial strain on an already stretched sector. Emma was furloughed and used the time to rethink what she wanted to do.
Her decision was to take a job as a project manager for a social enterprise delivering on-line arts participation for older people living with neurological conditions but she soon realised it was not the best fit for her skills. A search for the right work led her to do a career change course called The Launch Pad, run by Careershifters.
The Saturday morning sessions were life-changing for Emma.
She said: “We were told not to expect a light-bulb moment but there really was one for me! They got you to think about something that gives you energy, uses your skills and can earn you a living. I realised a curated book shop fitted my background, personality and was what I wanted from a career.”
All of Emma’s previous work came into play as she had years of knowledge about people’s experience of entering spaces that tell stories and how they connected with it.
It took her a long time to find the right shop location and during the search she took the bull by the horns and set up a mobile bookshop van. This was great market research but logistically challenging, due to the street licences needed to trade and – quite often – the weather!
She said: “Working from the van, with limited space, helped me understand how to put a stock selection together. I also learnt the secret of success was loving books and talking about them. The van could only hold 1,000 books so it was a very personalised experience as I had good knowledge of most of them.”
Her bookshop in the Riverside area of Durham city opened in 2022 and initially stocked around 5,000 books. This rose to 8,000 before Christmas last year which she admits was a bit of a squash and in the last fortnight Collected has opened another level, so there is a great stock of over 10,000 books.
She has learnt a lot in her business journey and advises other entrepreneurs to do rather than overthink - try things out, be prepared to fail, otherwise you can’t learn.
One of her favourite things about owning a bookshop are the events she runs with her team of four.
Emma said: “I love all of the author events we run and that this programme really adds to the community and cultural life of Durham, where I live. This is very important to me.”
One of her highlights since opening Collected was the North-East born author Eliza Clark event, on the paperback publication of her second novel Penance. Emma loves her writing and explains it is because she rips up the rule book about what you can and can’t say.
She said: “One of the joys of my job is to have the opportunity to pitch for events with very well-known authors as well as find out about those who are just getting started or haven’t yet reached wider attention, getting the chance to highlight their writing and share it with our customers. In 2024, it was a complete pleasure to host artist and author Anna Chapman Parker for an event on her book Understorey: A Year Among Weeds. Beautiful both to behold and to read, Understorey is a delightful, quiet, and tender day-to-day exploration of what can be gained by paying attention to the smallest of things. Drawing on a broad hinterland of knowledge as well as Anna's finely rendered sketches, this book brings a lovely mix of joy, curiosity, and reflection to accompany you through the calendar year..”
Emma is an avid reader and keeps a book diary, initially reviewing each book as well as listing them. She also makes a reading commitment each year and in 2020, at the time she was still commuting for work in York, this was to read more non-fiction
Favourite non-fiction reads from that year include Square Haunting by Francesca Wade about five exceptional women (H.D., Dorothy L. Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power, and Virginia Woolf) who lived around the same London square in Bloomsbury at different times between the World Wars.
She also loved Late Fragments by Kate Gross and Notes to Self by Emilie Pine.
Collected’s up and coming events include Lucy Steeds on her book The Artist, Tuesday 11 March at 6.30pm (now on the longlist for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction) and Naomi Booth, will be talking about her novel raw content on Wednesday, 12 March at 7pm. Emma said: “I really enjoyed Naomi’s writing as it has a Northern landscape and talks about OCD and early parenthood with great sensitivity.”
There are a wide range of authors throughout the year and the link to book on to events is here.
The Stand-Up Mam has funny family stories in it, do you have one to share?
When I was small we would go to Northumberland on holiday every year and often visit the Alnwick Playhouse while we were there. We saw a children’s play and had been lucky enough to get front row seats. There was a lot of interaction with the audience and at one point one of the characters stole something from another and hid it with an audience member – inevitably, me. When the actor was hunting he stood right in front of me and shouted ‘You’ve got it.’ I was about six years old and I was terrified. I have never sat in the first row since that date and I’m in my 40s!’