Freya Blyth, from Kendal, has won the Rising Star Award from The Bookseller as well as the TikTok Book Award for Indie Bookshop of the Year. She founded her lovely little Bookshop by the Sea in Aberystwyth three years ago, in the middle of the Covid-19 Lockdown. Freya moved to Wales from her hometown in South Lakeland over ten years ago, to start her undergraduate degree at Aberystwyth University.
After graduating and moving back to Kendal, Freya began working as librarian for Queen Katherine School and would volunteer at Kendal Library for the Summer Reading Scheme. Freya was ‘inspired’ by her love of libraries and travelled to Jerusalem where she ran an International Children’s Library until the Covid-19 pandemic hit and she was forced to move back to the UK. She moved back to her university town and felt ‘really passionate’ about wanting to do something to help rebuild the community again.
Freya decided to start a pop-up bookshop on the seafront, which was the beginning of the Bookshop by the Sea. The Bookshop by the Sea is community-focused space which serves to bring people together by offering creative writing classes, poetry evenings, live music, children's story times, author talks, art workshops with local artists and more. Freya was officially presented with the Rising Star Award from The Bookseller on Thursday July 18 and won the TikTok Book Award for Indie Bookshop of the Year on Monday July 29.
She said it is ‘honestly impossible’ to choose which of.