Where did the name of your business come from?

Maria's Bookshop is named after Maria Martinez, a legendary Tewan potter from San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico. Martinez included water birds on many of her black-on-black pots. The founder of Maria's Bookshop, Dusty Teal, liked the birds so much he decided to use a similar bird as the Maria's Bookshop logo and name the store Maria’s Bookshop. No one named Maria has ever worked in the store.

What is your business mission?

The mission of Maria’s Bookshop is to enrich the passions of life through books and community. We strive to build strong community connection by cultivating a place for our community to gather and discover.

How do you support the community?

Maria's Bookshop supports the community by fostering connection to books and to one another. We support our local business community by being actively involved in local organizations like the BID and Local First. We also support our local children by supporting many local schools and literacy programs. Our community supports us, and in turn, we support them.

Tell us a little history about your business? How it evolved over time?

Dusty Teal took over a 12 year old bookstore named The Bookshop in 1984. Under his ownership, The Bookshop became Maria's Bookshop and eventually moved locations to it's current home at 960 Main Ave. Teal designed and built much of the store's beautiful interior and cultivated the warm culture we continue to embrace today. Peter Schertz and Andrea Avantaggio took over Maria’s Bookshop in 1997. In their 22 years of ownership, with a focus on cultivating community connection, they continued to grow the store into the community cornerstone it is today. In 2019, their son, Evan Schertz, took over the store. The mission of Maria's Bookshop remains what is has always been: enrich the passions of life through books and community.

What do you enjoy most about running a small business in Durango?

I love the connection to the Durango community that Maria's Bookshop has. We are very fortunate to have a community which supports us so passionately. So, what I enjoy the most about running a small business is getting to be a little part of the incredible Durango community and being able to reciprocate that support as much as possible.

Tell us about your team.

We have an incredible staff of booksellers here at Maria's Bookshop. We are as diverse in our backgrounds as we are in our reading interests, but we are united under our shared love of books and the community we serve.