Lisa Swayze is the General Manager and Buyer at Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca’s cooperatively owned independent bookstore. You’ve heard me mention Buffalo Street Books on all episodes—and it is Lisa who has really transformed the store into a community space for all of our community, where anyone can find themselves represented in the books, events, and atmosphere of the bookstore.

Hillary Smith is Southern Pomo and Coastal Miwok and originally from Northern California. She has been a bookseller on and off since 2009. In December 2021 she left her job as an indie bookstore manager in California and moved to Glens Falls, New York. She started Black Walnut Books as a queer and Native pop-up and online bookstore focusing on Indigenous, BIPOC and queer authors. In January Black Walnut Books will become a brick-and-mortar bookstore in the Shirt Factory in Glens Falls.

Hannah Oliver Depp is the owner of Loyalty Bookstores in Petworth, DC and Silver Spring, MD. Loyalty serves all readers as a diverse, intersectional feminist bookstore and programming space. Oliver Depp is a founding member of the American Bookselling Association Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and serves on the boards of Bookshop.org and as The President of the New Atlantic Independent Bookseller’s Association (NAIBA).

Books Recommended:

All the recommended books from our three booksellers can be found at the website, burnedbybooks.com

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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