CALVIN CROSBY

2022 Leadership Winner

Calvin Crosby is the former Executive Director of CALIBA, the co-owner of The King’s English Bookshop, the co-chair of the Mosaic Community, and Executive Director of Brain Food Books (501c3).
In 2021, Calvin returned to his hometown of Salt Lake City; before this, he spent 25 years in the Northern California Indie Bookstore world. He started as a part-time bookseller at Book Passage in Corte Madera. He later opened Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Building, and for over a decade, when he wasn't at Book Passage, he was at Books Inc. (with locations throughout the Bay Area. He later became Executive Director of NCIBA, spending the next few years running the organization, eventually creating a single regional office, California Independent Booksellers Alliance. As E.D. he ensured all the programming represented everyone and started Mosaic to give voice and share best practices with targeted programming for the BIPOC bookseller community.
After purchasing shares from longtime friend Betsy Burton, Calvin became co-owner of The King’s English Bookshop. On TKE’s recent 45th anniversary, they launched Brain Food Books, a 501c3 that puts new books into the hands of kids without regular access.

ANADA WERNER

2022 Innovation Winner

Anada Werner (she/they) is the General Manager of A Room of One's Own Bookstore, a Queer & Trans-owned space located in Madison, WI. She has been, variously, a florist, a bartender, and a library page, but always a booklover through and through. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming in 2023 from Ugly Duckling Presse.

PILOT VIRUET

2022 Activism Winner

Pilot Viruet is a journalist, television writer, and bookseller born and raised in New York. Their writing has appeared everywhere from The New York Times and The Atlantic, to Sesame Street and Pinecone & Pony. In 2020, Pilot co-founded The Rolling Library, an abolitionist mutual aid group that believes in education over incarceration and community over capitalism. TRL provides free books and literacy events to the NYC area through free book fairs, pop-ups, and the installation of Little Free Libraries (primarily at NYCHA residences). Pilot also works at their local bookstore, Astoria Bookshop, and is a member of the Astoria Food Pantry team, the 31st Avenue Open Streets Collective, and other mutual aid groups that are fighting for Black and queer liberation. Currently, Pilot lives in Queens with their partner, a very cute dog, and a very cute rabbit.

MELANIE KNIGHT

 Books Inc.

Melanie Knight is the children’s frontlist buyer for ten Books Inc locations around the northern California area.  She has been working in the book industry since 2009, and has worked in everything from event coordination to managing her own store in her time at Books Inc.

She is on the ABA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and was elected to the ABA Board in September 2020.

MICHELLE MALONZO

Head of Operations, The Word | A Storytelling Sanctuary

Michelle Malonzo is Chief Operating Officer at The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary. Previously she was a buyer at Changing Hands Bookstore in Arizona after nearly a decade in publishing. Michelle served on the boards of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association and ABA Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee. She is a 2022 National Book Award Judge for Fiction, a recipient of the 2021 BIPOC Bookseller Award for Leadership, a 2020 Bookselling Without Borders Fellow and 2019 Kirkus Judge for Fiction.

DARTRICIA ROLLINS

Bookseller at Charis Books and More and Assistant Director of Charis Circle

Dartricia Rollins is a Queer, Black, Southern organizer and cultural worker. She works as a Bookseller at Charis Books and More and Assistant Director of Charis Circle, the nonprofit programming arm of Charis Books and More. She is on the Board of Directors of Access Reproductive Care-Southeast and an individual member of the National Network for Abortion Funds. Dartricia is an organizer with the Atlanta Chapter of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Dartricia’s latest project is Georgia Dusk: a southern liberation oral history project connecting the intersections of Black movement and cultural work in Atlanta, Georgia across generations.