PAST EVENTS        SHOP                 
Paper + Dirt is a bookshop and community space in Pittsburgh, specializing in magazines, hard-to-find periodicals and stationery. 

Our proximity to Frick Park, the “Dirt” side of things, has us organizing trail races, hosting trail run film festivals and other events getting people outdoors and on the trails.

The bookshop is located at 7105 Reynolds St just beyond Frick Park - Pittsburgh’s largest municipal park.

Save the Date for Frick Park Spring 2025 Trail Race Series:

- April 30th, 2025

- May 7th, 2025

- May 14th, 2025

- May 21st, 2025






Looking for a space to hold a zine exchange, listening party, or modern salon? Or just looking for a really great spot to read?



We’re currently creating a space at 7105 Reynolds St in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood (the former Prohibition Pastries) that will be more than a book shop and not quite a coffee shop. A place to gather in-person. We’re thinking of Frick Park as our muse, and though the space itself is an intimate 400 sqft, the sidewalk, greenspace, and park beyond are easy extentions.




We want to offer a space, a place, to begin with creativity and community to help people gather, process, share, and create towards meaning-making and truth-telling.

That might look like a communal workplace or salon. A club house and meeting spot for a weekly running group. A place to decompress and continue discussions after events like the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair. A home base for traveling writers, artists, and designers. A place to help connect you in the ways you're looking for. We’ll continually be reflecting on how we can uphold inclusivity and honour intersectionality within the space.




Founded by Chas and Mak, but it's a collective effort!

Chas Wagner is an event designer and brand strategist from Pittsburgh who earned his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. After positions with Blackrock as a fixed income analyst and RunKeeper as Community Manager, Chas's current work focuses on highlighting everyday people doing extra-ordinary acts in sport, small business and coffee.

From starting Boston's first creative sports collective to fixing up abandoned garages and converting it into a community sports hub, the never-been-done-before is a driving force in his athletic art practice. Chas enjoys print material, trail running and extremely quiet cafes.

Makenzie O'Connor (Mak) is an artist, designer, and researcher who earned their MDes from UMICH where they worked at the intersecion of neuroscience and architecture designing spaces with sensory sensitivities in mind. After positions with CADRE as a design researcher and Point Line Projects as a design and communications coordinator, Mak’s current work focuses on uplifting local, community-minded makers of all kinds. 




stay in the loop





Our studio offers a creative, justice-oriented space for all people, including any and all underrepresented communities (marginalized folks, neurodivergent folks, the 2SLGBTQAI+ and the BIPOC community).
Grateful to be working, unlearning, and living on the stolen ancestral territories of the Osage, Shawandasse Tula, and Manongahela Nations. We commit to the process of unlearning and listening, to centering Indigenous voices and supporting decolonization. Click here to learn whose land you are on.