Fellows

Doug Guevera

I am the owner and operator of the independent used bookstore W.Whitman Books in    Middleburgh, Schoharie County, Upstate New York. Founded in July, 2017 with my late husband David, the store serves as a regional cultural center offering curated used and rare books, hosting book and poetry readings and producing acoustic music concerts. I also host a poetry blog on the store’s Facebook page for 29,000 + national/international followers. As a Fellow, I look forward to concentrating in the area of antiquarian/rare books by LGBTQ+ and Latino and African American authors.

Marya McQuirter

Based in DC, I am part of a long local, national and diasporic tradition of collectors of black studies books & ephemera. I sought out this fellowship because I’m seeking ethical ways to become a bookseller, drawing on my work as a collector, curator, researcher & writer. Check out my bluesky account to see pithy posts about my rare & used book finds. Check out my website for longer form writing.  I was accepted into the MRes in the History of the Book program at the University of London. My thesis will focus on the paratextual arguments and consumption of foundational black studies books published by Oxford University Press in the 1980s and 1990s. If you have funding/scholarship suggestions, please contact me via my website. 

M L Mutrux

M L Mutrux is a queer and working class writer based in Philadelphia. They are originally from Saint Louis, Missouri. M L has been a part of Red Salmon Arts, Casa de Resistencia Bookstore since 2013, assisting in projects such as maintenance of the bookstore, the Resistencia Community Garden, and the on-site archive The People’s Library of Resistance/La biblioteca del pueblo de Resistencia. They are part of Tejana Historias, a visual repository documenting Tejana history from pre-contact to today, and Austin Beloved Community, a people’s history project documenting working class victories in Austin, Texas. Find M L’s artwork and writing on Instagram @mlmutrux.

Pico Banerjee

Pico Banerjee got his start in the book trade as a teenager, weeding dead stock at a used/rare bookshop in Madison, NJ. Beginning in 2023, he served a brief stint cataloging general Americana for James Arsenault & Company, before, by spring 2025, jumping ship to pursue his own interests. These include South Asian American historical documents, the history of the uses (and misuses) of the turban, and the unusual beliefs and practices of diasporic communities in the United States. He doesn’t know what tomorrow brings, except paper, and with it a story.

Pablo Guzman

Pablo Guzman is the owner of The Midnight Oil, a beloved independent bookstore in Greeley, Colorado, and its rare book annex, Belinda’s Book Bazaar. With a passion for preserving stories and literary history, Pablo has expanded his bookstore’s offerings to include collectible and antiquarian books, focusing on curation, community engagement, and education. His work blends modern bookselling with old-world charm, often highlighting banned books, public domain works, and culturally significant texts. Outside of books, Pablo is involved in community literacy programs, creative writing, and multi-business entrepreneurship using storytelling and social impact to drive everything he does.

Lauren Jones

lauren jones, Esq. (she/her) is the founder and steward of yes please: a bookhouse and carespace located in Scottdale, GA. yes please is a physical manifestation of her reverence for black women and gender expansive writers and readers who continue to show us the way forward. yes please functions as a bookseller, lending library, seed library, community garden, and a demarcated space for the practice of care. the books that are sold at yes please reflect the books held in the lending library collection, a collection of books acquired and preserved for their historical, spiritual, and cultural significance made available to the wider community; an invitation to follow the literary lineages and throughlines of ideas that connect us to our past, present, and future. through yes please she encourages readers to think of their book collections as their personal archive, a representation of their interest, values, and inner world; a means to leave a legacy for those who may pick up the same book seeking the same experience that they themselves once sought.

Adigun Kazemde Ajamu

Adigun Kazemde Ajamu is a visionary and community activist. As an avid reader of Afrikan and Black culture, he knew that he wanted to promote Black positive messaging with a purpose. This love for our people and thirst for knowledge led to the founding of the Black Dot Cultural Center and Bookstore. He had a vision of bringing his people together and helping them learn more about themselves to promote power within our communities. The Black Dot Cultural Center and Bookstore is not simply the expansion of a brand, but an extension of Adigun Kazemde Ajamu. A devoted husband, father and grandfather, Kazemde resides in Lithonia, Georgia. Affectionately known as Baba Kaz, he now makes public appearances and speaks to young people about the importance of education, respect for their elders and making a difference within the Black community.

Adam Bernales

Adam Bernales has been selling books on the Eastside of Los Angeles since 2010. He is the co-founder of two shops there, the first of which was Seite in East Los Angeles, and the second is Other Books in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights that he currently looks after. He has an interest in literature, the rare and uncommon, artists' books, zines and trying to provide an accessible space where others can find the same.

Jacinta R. Saffold

Jacinta R. Saffold is an assistant professor of African American Literature at the University of Delaware and a digital archivist. She researches 20^th- and 21^st-century African American literature, Hip Hop Studies, and the Digital Humanities. Currently, she is working on her first manuscript, Books & Beats: The Cultural Kinship of Street Lit and Hip Hop and the Essence Book Project, a computational collection of popular African American Literature. 

Karen M. Ugarte

Karen M. Ugarte, MSW (she/her), has been the bookstore manager at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore since late 2020. She received her undergraduate degree from California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in Gender and Women’s Studies and Chicane Studies in 2015. Her previous experience includes supporting and advocating for survivors of intimate partner violence, families and individuals experiencing homelessness, LGBTQIA+ individuals across the lifespan, and providing mental health services to children, youth, and families in the San Fernando Valley. Karen was Tia Chucha’s 2019-2020 Macro Social Work Intern while completing her Master’s in Social Work from CSUN. As a graduate student her research focused on giving voice to the experiences of LGBTQIA+ Latine women. She is an advocate for narrative, art, and creative expression as essential tools for community healing and care.

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.

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.