Katie Mitchell

A stunning visual homage to Black bookstores, featuring a selection of shops around the country alongside essays that celebrate the history, community, activism, and culture these spaces embody, with an original foreword by Nikki Giovanni.

Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People chronicles the Black bookstore's past and present lives. Combining narrative prose and eye-catching photography, Prose to the People is a reader's road trip companion to the world of Black books.

Interspersed throughout are essays, poems, and interviews by New York Times bestsellers Kiese Laymon, Rio Cortez, Pearl Cleage, and many more journalists, activists, authors, academics, and poets that offer deeper perspectives on these bookstores' role throughout the diaspora. Complete with a foreword by world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, Prose to the People is a beautiful tribute to these vital pillars of the Black community.

Katie Mitchell is a storyteller and bookseller. Katie lives, works, and writes in Atlanta, Georgia. Her online and pop-up Black bookstore, Good Books, has been featured in The New York Times, NBC, NPR, PBS, and many other outlets. Katie is a Dorothy Porter Wesley fellow.