As the owner of the premisses is selling the house, LGBTQI bookshop Kartonnen Dozen is looking for a new home. Kartonnen Dozen is not only the sole bookshop dedicated to queer content in Antwerp, but also in Flanders and in Dutch-speaking Europe. I.e. Flanders, Brussels and the Netherlands.

“The owner is selling the property and we will have to find a new place within the next six months. That’s not long for something as unwieldy as a bookstore”, says Kartonnen Dozen manager Johanna M Pas. 

That’s why Pas starts a search for a new feasible location. “By feasible I mean: affordable, practically organisable, in this neighborhood as moving again means getting our customers on board again and recruiting new customers, and that took us about four years here, or, for example, in a building together with a other organisation or business.”

Pas is looking for practical, doable and novel ideas.

Kartonnen Dozen?

The name of the bookshop translates as Cardboard Boxes in English and is actually the title of a gay coming of age novel by Tom Lannoye.

Apart from SOGIESC themed books, Johanna M Pas also sells DVD’s, memorabilia and other products you can find in bookshops. Mostly in Dutch, but also in English and sometimes in French.

SOGIESC, by the way, stands for sexual orientation (lesbian, bi, gay, …), gender identity and expression (cisgender, transgender, non-binary, …) and sex characteristics (e.g. intersex).

Pas and Kartonnen Dozen also sometimes publish novels and poetry. The bookshop also makes point of organizing book presentation, lectures and small events.

Kartonnen Dozen started life as ‘t Verschil, which was a shop and a publishing house. Under those two names, the initiative has been active for 25 years now.

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