The Founder
Building the bookshop holiday that doesn't exist yet.
The Story Bank is a concept I've been building toward for a while. A place that doesn't exist yet — a 1914 heritage bank in Uki, NSW, where guests stay for a week, run the bookshop at the front, deposit their phone in the original steel vault, and leave having lived the life they kept describing at dinner parties.
The idea grew from two things: the extraordinary proof that The Open Book in Wigtown, Scotland provides — a 15-year waitlist for a bookshop Airbnb — and a growing conviction that exhausted, screen-saturated people are desperate for a different kind of week. One that gives them a role, a rhythm, a real place to disappear into.
While the building is in development, The Story Bank's Book Prescription tool is live — a free, personalised book recommendation service that works the way a great bookseller does. You tell it what you're looking for. It tells you exactly what to read next.
It's powered by AI but written with a bookseller's instinct — warm, specific, and never generic.
Each month I write Letters from the Vault — dispatches about books, slow living, the project, and the village of Uki. If you'd like them delivered, you can join the waitlist below. Subscribers also get early access when bookings open.
Uki is a small village in the Tweed Valley, northern NSW, less than an hour from Gold Coast Airport. It sits at the foot of Wollumbin — Mt Warning — the first place on the Australian mainland to catch the light each morning. The Buttery Bazaar market is on Saturdays. The national park is outside the door. The village has galleries, a 110-year-old post office café, and the kind of residents who stay longer than they mean to.
It was already cast before I found the building.
Join the waitlist for early booking access and monthly Letters from the Vault.