Fellows

Lise Childers

Lise Michelle Childers grew up in the valley of Kalihi Uka, Kona, Oʻahu and has worked with books for 6 years, first at Nā Mea Hawaiʻi and currently at Native Books ma Nuʻuanu, which specializes in content material about Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. They manage institutional and web sales for the bookstore, with an interest in rare and out-of-print books and how the ʻike kūpuna brilliantly distilled in the form of books will continue to be a guiding light for healing and transformation.

Zakiya Collier

Zakiya Collier (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based Black, queer archivist and memory worker. Since age six, Zakiya has stewarded a collection of books, photographs, certificates, artworks, and mementos to document her life and the lives of her loved ones. She has worked at the intersection of Black history, cultural memory, and digital technologies in her professional and archival consulting work with Black and/or queer artists, scholars, elders, and cultural heritage organizations. In a moment in which marginalized communities are often priced out of markets selling materials documenting their own histories, Zakiya intends to grow in their knowledge of ethically stewarding and redistributing rare historical materials and continue to be a resource for clients and community members caring for invaluable archival and rare book collections.

Jeannine Cook

For the last 10 years Jeannine A. Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, influencers, and most recently herself. She is a proud educator and mother with years of experience teaching creative storytelling in alternative environments from bodegas to city blocks. In February 2020, Jeannine completed her first book of short stories, Conversations With Harriett and opened Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of North Philadelphia. In 2021 she opened Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, NJ, both with the mission to celebrate women authors, women artists, and women activists. Jeannine’s children’s book, affectionately named Harrietts, was released in Fall 2022. She is currently working on a new book if the creek don’t rise.

Francisco Hernandez

Francisco Hernandez grew up in California and Hawaii. Before becoming a bookseller he taught political philosophy at Wesleyan's Center for Prison Education and sixth grade in the South Bronx. He formerly managed Alabaster Bookshop in Greenwich Village and recently opened his own used bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Phillip Richardson

Phillip Richardson is the owner, curator and shopkeeper at Solitary Confinement, a used book and record store in downtown Richmond (established in 2020). He tends to procure out-of-print and hard-to-find books across all genres but prefers to concentrate his time and resources on: art criticism, afrofuturism, radical black feminism, prison abolition and postcolonial studies.

Jaime Harker

Jaime Harker is the founder of Violet Valley Bookstore, a queer, feminist, transinclusive nonprofit bookstore in Water Valley, Mississippi. She is a professor of English and director of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on feminist and queer print culture of the 20th century; while researching the Women in Print movement for her book The Lesbian South, she was inspired to start her own bookstore in 2017. Violet Valley Bookstore is the only queer feminist bookstore in the state of Mississippi. Jaime looks forward to growing the bookstore to support a full-time staff member and continue to support queer youth in Mississippi.

Nahid Khan

Nahid Khan was born and raised in London and Toronto to South Asian Urdu-speaking Muslim parents, and grew up with books, newspapers and magazines, libraries, museums and multi-cultural experiences. Since her undergrad days, she has been collecting American Muslim publications and print ephemera in addition to books on American Muslim history (all ethnic groups) and literature, as well as Muslim world cultural heritage. She has also gathered a lot of material on U.S. news reporting on American Muslims, Islamic faith, and Muslim world generally, as well as the larger topic of U.S. news and entertainment media, artistic, literary and other cultural representations of religious, ethnic and racial minority groups, in connection with her graduate studies. She is now exploring ways to make this archive available to the broader community.

Warren Lee

Warren Lee was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut to a family dedicated to higher education. He earned degrees at Howard University (BBA - Finance, and Hastings College of the Law, JD). He is a member of the NY Bar and a Certified Financial Planner®. Warren's bookselling interest started when dating his now wife who presented an MBA thesis on independent bookselling. He is currently co-founder and owner of 44th & 3rd Bookseller in the West End section of Atlanta, GA. As a bookstore in a college setting (Atlanta University Center), they desire to be a resource for the entire community. They intend to offer a rare and collectible book service for Black titles and tools to research books and assist with valuation of collections. Warren is excited to be a Fellow.

Katie Mitchell

Katie Mitchell is the co-owner of Good Books, an online and pop-up Black bookstore in Atlanta, with her mother, Katherine. Katherine raised Katie on Black books—reading Black authors, reciting Black poems, and genuinely thinking Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou were her aunties. Good Books grew from that rearing. Now, Katie pays homage to Blackness through literature, from Tupac to Toni Morrison. New or vintage. Acclaimed or obscure. All Black books are Good Books.

Michelle Walton

Michelle Walton is co-owner of The Collective - Oakland. She was born and raised in Oakland, Ca., where her love for literature and art began. Solo travel is her therapy, she cannot imagine life without coffee and books, and she says that the most significant thing that she has done in life thus far is raising her two children.