For its all-female focus, The Wing goes by the book.
The growing women’s-only co-working space — which has locations in Flatiron, SoHo and DUMBO — offers its members such amenities as “really good” Wi-Fi, conference rooms and showers.
A key component of the design is also a lending library at each space with thousands of titles by or about women.
For its locations in SoHo and DUMBO, which opened last month, The Wing partnered with the Strand Book Store to curate that selection.
“We look to work with partners who not only support our mission and are passionate about amplifying women’s voices, but also add to our member experience in organic and creative ways,” said The Wing co-founder Audrey Gelman, 30. “Partnering with Strand Book Store, another company owned by women, was an easy choice for us.”
The color-coded libraries continue to grow with each location, with nearly 2,700 books at the SoHo location and some 3,000 in DUMBO.
“We thought an only-female author library would be such an incredible opportunity,” said Sky Friedlander, 27, director of The Strand’s Books by the Foot, which creates custom book collections for commercial spaces, personal libraries and even TV shows, such as “Saturday Night Live.” “I’ve curated a lot of collections, but I’ve never done that before.”
Given their size, the libraries at both locations have books pulled from every section of the store, from fiction to film to cooking to history to science.
“We also wanted to make an effort to make the library as inclusive as possible,” Friedlander said. “That means books by women throughout history, from different countries.”
That means books by heralded novelists like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, to memoirs by modern women like Missy Copeland, to nonfiction like “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, and works by the surrealist novelist Leonora Carrington.
The newer DUMBO location also includes some more recent titles, such as Zadie Smith’s “Feel Free” and Jennifer Egan’s “Manhattan Beach.”
The titles are primarily by women, though the libraries do include books written by men about women, primarily in the biography section, Friedlander said.
Popular titles from The Wing’s libraries include the novel “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the essay collection “This Will Be My Undoing” by Morgan Jerkins and the career-minded “The Big Life” by Ann Shoket.
“Members love having access to the books in the library,” Gelman said. “There’s something empowering about being surrounded with books written by women and stories written about women.”
Only members have access to the titles, but the public can explore some of the authors in the collection, dubbed the Lady Library, online at strandbooks.com/the-lady-library.
