CHRISTIN EVANS & PRAVEEN MADAN

Christin and Praveen are the new face of the Booksmith. They bought the bookstore from founder Gary Frank in 2007. Refugees from the Land of Corporations, they have many exciting plans for The Booksmith. Their big, hairy, audacious goal - Create the Independent Bookstore for the 21st Century.

Christin and Praveen also recently started LitMinds.org along with Christin's sister Carrie. LitMinds is a community where readers, authors, and independent booksellers can share their unique reading interests, make new friends, and enjoy stimulating conversations. LitMinds aspires to be a place for celebration and a catalyst for change. LitMinds is a free service.

Click here to learn more about Christin and Praveen's reading interests.

THOMAS GLADYSZ

Thomas Gladysz (pronounced gwah-dish) has worked at The Booksmith since 1987. He is the currently the store events coordinator and publicist - under his tenure, the Booksmith events program has become widely recognized as one of the best of its kind. Gladysz has also been active in the local bookselling community. For nine years, he served on the Board of Directors of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. He has been a panel speaker at various A.B.A,. B.E.A. and N.C.I.B.A. tradeshows, and serves on the Bookseller's Advisory Board of the Paris Review. Gladysz has authored articles for trade publications such as Publisher's Weekly, American Bookseller and Bookselling This Week. He coined the widely used phrase "Independent bookstores for independent minds."

Concurrent with his career in the bookstore trade, Gladysz has worked as a journalist and author. He is a widely published art critic, book reviewer & free lance writer with nearly 500 published articles to his credit. Gladysz has contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle, PhotoMetro, Art Talk and other newspapers, magazines and literary journals; he has also contributed to two books, Allen Ginsberg's Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews (HarperCollins) and the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (Univ. of Nebraska Press). He is currently working on a book about the silent film star Louise Brooks. His website about the actress, www.pandorasbox.com, has been written up in publications including the New York Times, USA Today, London Times, Melbourne Age, Stuttgarter Zeitung, and Atlanta Journal and Constitution. His interests in film and books collide in an interview on the Turner Classic Movies website.

MARTHA

Miss Martha grew up in the Ozark hills of Arkansas. There she often looked for magical castles and gnomes in the woods. After a lovely few years in the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest she moved to San Francisco. She now lives in an old Victorian in the Upper Haight where she reads, writes, makes homemade cards, and always keeps her eyes peeled for magic.

KIARA

The Booksmith is Kiara's day job. Her real job is trying to promote literature and fine writing throughout the world. You can find out more at her website: http://www.kiarabrinkman.com/

JANINE MOGANNAM

Janine is a writer and future radical hip librarian from San Francisco who is resigned to being a book lady for the rest of her life but certainly does not mind. She harbors secret riot grrl aspirations, loves shoes, small dogs, and poetry of many kinds, and thinks it is also important for you to know that she is a Sagittarius.

TODD LAVOIE

Sometimes I miss the good old days, hanging with Lou Reed and Ultraviolet and Candy Darling back at the factory. "Oh, that Todd," Andy Warhol used to joke to whoever was conscious, "He's such the Star." Then we'd trade silkscreens and off I'd go on my merry way. Those days are long behind me, though I still cry whenever I listen to Transformer.

Goodbye Andy, goodbye Studio 54, hello obscurity.

So, now I'm in SF, biding my time until I cash in on my fifteen minutes of fame. I'm working on a novel, still type-type-typing away. I surround myself with books and music. I dream of making the perfect risotto, realizing it'll never happen if I keep eating out as much as I do.

I have played one continuous game of "Let's run from one end of the apartment to the other" with my puppy since January. I scrounge along the ground for plastic bags. I get caught in thought over what I'd say to David Bowie over coffee and crepes. I go out dancing from time to time — pretend it's 1980 all over again. I sing Holy Holy to TwoBuck Chuck from Trader Joe's.

I saunter into the secondhand shops on the Haight with my Head Held High...and emerge empty-handed, hopes dashed into the urine-stinking pavement...I am the Anti-Scenester. And I wouldn't spend my days a bit differently.

I love this place.

JIM

Jim comes from the Mysterious East where he grew up in the Atlantic shipping lanes.

He has a great deal of free time and he fills it by playing solitaire with his bunkmates and writing lyrics to Tuvan throat songs.

Jim is working on his 3 volume "The Secret History of Plaid". Volume 1:The Scottish Years is almost complete.

Jim is tall, but luckily divisions amongst the Tall members of staff have left them vulnurable to takeover by the Short members of the staff.

SEAN CHIKI

"It was all Jack London's fault really. If not for that bender on the San Francisco waterfront back in 1893, I'd never have walked into that bookshop with the help wanted sign. Two bottles of whiskey later and with no memory of where I'd left my pants, I found myself alone, Jack having signed aboard the Sophie Sutherland bound for the coast of Japan. With such auspicious signs began my career as a book-slinger."

Sean has worked at the Booksmith since 1998. He occupies his free time with many questionable activities (most of them legal) that he won't go into here but if you're really curious, you might want to take a peek at www.seanchiki.com.

GABE

Gabe has just joined our band of bookish brothers (and sisters). He has a poetic soul.

JULIE BOYER

Julie came from romantic Italy and is trying to take us in hand. She bakes a mean cookie and knows how to find a bargain.

CHRISTY PASCOE

In 1978 Christy started working in bookstores and is consequently poor in dollars, but rich in books. She lives with her consort Thomas (the Booksmith's events coordinator), and their ferocious guard dogs, Sinbad and Tula, in their lovely Castle in Noe Valley. Christy's duties at the Booksmith involve hiding in the back room behind piles of signed books and pretending to work on the website. In her spare time she tips altars and kicks over sand castles.