I grew up loving books because of my grandmother, who curated a library just for me. The narrow hallways of her house were crowded with bookshelves filled with Caldecotts, Newberys, and Coretta Scott King’s, collections of works by Alcott, Twain, and Poe, Penguin classics, and Nelson Doubleday’s Junior Deluxe Editions, which sparked my forever love of folk and fairy tales and mythology. Under my grandmother’s tutelage, books became my own personal portal, my escape into another realm.
As an adult, I became a children’s librarian, stocking my shelves with the same award winners as my grandmother. Like her, I did whatever I could to spark my students’ love of reading and writing, actively seeking out books which reflected their backgrounds and interests. I believed, then and now, that everyone is a reader, that they just have to find the book that speaks to them.
I left the library a few years back, but I’ve remained fascinated by librarians of all flavors—the fictional ones I loved in works by Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, their onscreen counterparts like Taystee Jefferson from “Orange Is the New Black” and Mary in the indie classic Party Girl, the archivists who focus on science, history, music, film, and more, or those who specialize in providing services for people of all abilities. However, the librarians who excite me the most are the ones who are also writers, like The Magic School Bus’s Joanna Cole, Beverly Cleary of the Ramona series, and Overdue’s Amanda Oliver. In honor of librarians everywhere, I’ve curated the following list.
Audre Lorde, author of Sister Outsider
Before she became known as a poet, professor, and activist, Audre Lorde served as a librarian at Hunter College, Columbia University, and in Mount Vernon. Lorde was the author of many acclaimed works, but is best known for her groundbreaking essay collection Sister,Outsider, which interrogates racism, sexism, class, homophobia and ageism, and explores the complexities of intersectional identity, advocating for the visibility of marginalized voices. Central to Lorde’s work is her belief in the importance of building community to enact social change. “You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same,” Lorde writes. “What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order for us to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.”
Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time
Even though Madeleine L’Engle wrote more than sixty books, she is best remembered for her Newbery-award winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels. Much of L’Engle’s work was written in New York’s Diocesan House of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where L’Engle served as a volunteer librarian and writer-in-residence for nearly four decades. In 2012, the Diocesan House became a designated Literary Landmark, with a plaque dedicated to L’Engle noting how her work reflected “both her Christian faith and interest in modern science.”
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, authors of Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Today Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are remembered as German academics who collected and published folklore in the 1800s. The two established the framework, for better or worse, for what we modern readers know as fairy tales. However, like most writers, the Grimm brothers had to find some other profession to support themselves and their families. At different stages in their careers, both served as librarians. Both appear to have been principled— even losing their jobs when they refused to sign oaths of allegiance to Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover.
Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty
Jenny Han is best known as the dynamic co-showrunner of Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, as well as the executive producer of Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. There she earned raves for disproving the long-held industry assumption that a series centering an Asian-American teenager couldn’t find a broad audience. However, before Hollywood, before The Summer I Turned Pretty topped the New York Times best-seller list, Han acquired books and coordinated programming in the middle and upper school library of New York City’s Calhoun School.
Alisa Alering, author of Smothermoss
Former librarian Alisa Alering’s rural gothic novel, Smothermoss, which debuts from Tin House in July, follows the saga of two half-sisters in 1980s Appalachia, the reverberations of the murders of two hikers on the Appalachian Trail, as well as other threats imperiling the sisters and their community. Praised by both Samantha Hunt and Karen Joy Fowler, Smothermoss is delightfully uncanny, and has been described as propulsive and hauntingly atmospheric.
Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things
Due to her strict Southern Baptist upbringing, queer Floridian author Kristen Arnett’s early access to literature was restricted. However, in part due to books provided by teachers and librarians, Arnett fell in love with reading. After graduating from Florida State with a Master’s in Library Science, Arnett became a reference librarian and worked in libraries for nearly two decades. Arnett even wrote much of her first novel, Mostly Dead Things on the job, coming in early in the morning, staying late in the evening, and even working through her lunch break.
Dee Brown, author of of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
During his six decade career, novelist, historian, and librarian Dee Brown authored or co-authored more than thirty books, but is best remembered for his 1970 classic, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. This is not a cheerful book, but history has a way of intruding upon the present,” Brown, a white Southerner, wrote in the introduction. Relying on primary sources by Native American interpreters who attended treaty sessions, tribal councils, meetings with US army officers, and eye-witness accounts of battles and other events, Brown’s book documents the genocide of Native Americans by the US government, concluding with the 1890 massacre in South Dakota at Wounded Knee, when the 7th US Cavalry disarmed and slaughtered 300 Sioux, including women and children. Not without controversy, both for its unflinching debunking of the noble pioneer myth, as well as for reducing Indigenous history to near-extinction, since its publication Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has changed the way Americans view history, been adapted into a movie, translated into at least 15 languages, and sparked a counter-narrative, David Treuer’s The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.
Maisy Card, author of These Ghosts Are Family
For over a decade, Maisy Card has served as a public librarian in New Jersey. She’s also taught at Columbia University and is a fiction editor for The Brooklyn Rail. Card’s 2021 novel, These Ghosts Are Family, is an intergenerational narrative exploring the repercussions of a faked death which also chronicles the family migration from colonial Jamaica to present-day America. Card’s nuanced exploration of the way each family member wrestles with their personal ghosts led to These Ghosts Are Family being honored with an American Book Award, among other accolades.
Thomas A. Dodson, author of No Use Pretending
Thomas A. Dodson serves as an assistant professor and librarian at Southern Oregon University but in his free time he writes short fiction. In his exquisitely crafted collection No Use Pretending, beekeepers, traumatized veterans, distant fathers, and other disparate narrators are forced into seemingly unbearable situations, and each work charts their attempts to alleviate their discomfort. Winner of the 2023 Iowa Award for Short Fiction, No Use Pretending is a must-read for lovers of the genre, with characters I still think about months after finishing the book.
Kelly Jensen, editor of Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy
Former teen librarian Kelly Jensen is an anti-authoritarian powerhouse. Since leaving the library, Jensen has edited three books (Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy, (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy, and Here We Are: 44 Voices Write, Draw, and Speak About Feminism for the Real World), joined the team at Book Riot, and runs the aptly-named newsletter Well-Sourced, which addresses all things related to books, censorship, and the current dystopian landscape for libraries.
Emilie Menzel, author of The Girl Who Became A Rabbit
Poet Emilie Menzel serves as a librarian at Duke University and the Seventh Wave community. This September, their debut book length lyric, The Girl Who Became A Rabbit, a dark, ruminative poem exploring how the body carries and shapes grief, as well as what it means to tell a story, will be published by beloved Southern indie press Hub City. Drawing comparisons to Max Porter and Maggie Nelson, Menzel remixes myth and fairytale to rewrite the body’s history. “It is important to make something beautiful,” Menzel writes, “To shape it into a form even when horrifically right.”
Laura Sims, author of How Can I Help You?
New Jersey reference librarian and poet Laura Sims’ 2023 psychological thriller How Can I Help You? draws directly from her workplace. Set in a small town public library, Sims’ novel pits two staff members against each other, with a new employee digging deep into her coworker’s sinister past. An insightful, edgy exploration of workplace politics, How Can I Help You? was A New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Book Riot, and CrimeReads Best Book of the Year.
Anne Spencer, poet
The majority of poet, gardener, teacher, and civil rights activist Anne Spencer’s work was published during the Harlem Renaissance—her poetry was so widely regarded that she became the second African American included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973). During Spencer’s lifetime, her home and garden was a gathering place for leading Black activists and intellectuals, including W.E.B. Dubois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King, Jr. However Spencer’s true passion was ensuring that the Black citizens of her community had equal access to libraries, and her advocacy led to the formation of the first library for Black citizens in Lynchburg, Virginia, which she led until 1942.
Ruby Todd, author of Bright Objects
Melbourne-based Ruby Todd grew up in a family of librarians and worked in libraries for years. Bright Objects, her July debut, is a thriller following the obsessed widow of a hit and run accident waiting for the arrival of a once in a lifetime comet. For fans of Emma Cline and Otessa Mashfegh, Bright Objects offers mystery, astronomy, and romance.
Douglas Westerbeke, author of A Short Walk Through a Wide World
Ohio librarian Douglas Westerbeke’s delightful novel A Short Walk Through a Wide World, which debuted in April, is my current go-to recommendation for anyone seeking a captivating, immersive read. A Short Walk follows the globetrotting adventures of Aubry Tourvel, who, after an encounter with a mysterious wooden puzzle ball, realizes she can live only if she keeps moving. From a riverboat in Siam to the sand dunes, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the jungle, with periodic detours in the type of library which could only be conjured by a librarian, A Short Walk Through a Wide World is a fantastic narrative, which explores the timeless question of how to find meaning in seemingly impossible circumstances.
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