Meet the Team!
Amy (she/her) is the Programs Manager and Children's Buyer at Loyalty and joined the team in 2021. Originally from Wilmington, DE, she spent nearly five years managing a chidren's bookstore in Brookline, MA before relocating to Silver Spring for Loyalty (and warmer climes!). Amy loves to be emotionally devastated by the books she reads and is especially passionate about representations of disability in kidlit. In her free time, Amy enjoys musical theatre, crossword puzzles, and playing and watching soccer.
Five books she loves:
1. The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall
2. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
3. The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir
4. One for All by Lillie Lainoff
5. We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds
Brandin (she/her) is a singer/songwriter in the DC area and one of our newest booksellers. She loves to cook so her section of choice would definitely be cookbooks. Brandin also has a love for Japanese manga and graphic novels.
Five favorite titles at our store include:
1. Tomie by Junji Ito
2. Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin
3. In Bibi's Kitchen by Hawa Hassan with Julia Turshen
4. Spy x Family by Tatsuya Endo
5. Bleach by Tite Kubo
Chardai (she/her) is a bookseller and manages TikTok at Loyalty Bookstores. Prior to joining Loyalty, she was living in Chicago studying Journalism. She is passionate about sharing black stories written by black authors on black characters to the world. When she isn’t at work, she is in her room cuddling with a black romance novel, listening to her favorite podcast or stuffing her face with food while devouring any form of romance media.
Top Favorite Books of All Time:
1. All About Love by Bell Hooks
2. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
3. Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan
4. More Than Enough by Elaine Welteroth
5. Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell
Christine (she/her) is the Co-Owner and Director of Programs for Loyalty and a graduate of Barnard College. She is a 2022 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree and currently serves on the DEI Committee for the American Booksellers Association. She recently chaired the Summer/Fall 2023 Indies Introduce panel and served on the ABA's Bookseller Advisory Council. Before finding her calling in bookselling, Christine was a quality control editor for audiobooks, a Realtor, Pilates teacher, and a professional dancer and actor. Besides reading, Christine loves museums, jigsaw puzzles, baby animal videos, collecting different editions of Pride & Prejudice, astrology memes (she's a Libra!), and checking things off of her to-do list. Christine is passionate about championing marginalized authors, especially Filipinx authors, at Loyalty and on her Bookstagram account @readingismagical.
Five of her favorite books:
1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
2. America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo
3. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
4. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
5. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
David (he/him) is the Web Order professional adult human here at Loyalty. It’s his fault your order is late. Yes, he is from Zimbabwe. Yes, he is white. Yes, he has a college degree and everything. A bookseller since 2006, he is a three-time winner of the McSweeney, lol, nvm, there are no awards in retail. David likes to read books (duh), medication package inserts, cereal boxes, and the internet. He believes the appropriate use of Oxford commas is contextual. David’s personal interests at present, if you must know, include scutoids, gabions, fractal modular design, autoantonyms, and so on.
Top Five Books:
1. Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton; “ALL THE HIPPOS GO BERSERK!”
2. Good Talk by Mira Jacob; “Is Daddy afraid of us?”
3. Matrix by Lauren Groff; “And all souls as they sing shine radiant into the world.”
4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor; “God favors us.”
5. Elements of Fiction by Walter Mosley; “Plot is the structure of revelation.”
Hannah (she/they) is the founder and co-owner of Loyalty Bookstores, has a Masters in English from American University, and has worked on many American Booksellers Association committees including helping to found their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. She is currently on the board of Bookshop.org and is serving as the president of our regional trade association, the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. More importantly, she is a giant nerd who loves King Arthur and James Baldwin equally and owns a fluffy white "dog" who is beautifully useless and gives us constant side-eye. In 2021 she was honored to receive the Women’s National Book Association Woman of the Year Award and served as a nonfiction judge for the National Book Awards. In 2018 she judged the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. She can be found across on social media @oliverdepp and more accurately found somehow working across both locations of Loyalty Bookstores simultaneously while advising another bookseller on the phone and fixing a broken shelf and repairing the toilet or whatever else needs to get done. Yes, she is a Virgo.
Top Five Books:
1. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
2. The Once & Future King by T.H. White
3. Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison
4. Another Country by James Baldwin
5. Patina by Jason Reynolds
Malik (he/him) is a writer from DC and has been working at Loyalty since the spring of 2019. Malik loves fiction, essays, and poetry. Malik has received fellowships for his writing from Lambda Literary, Brooklyn Poets, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and other organizations. When not at work, Malik can usually be found haunting a local bakery.
Top Five Books:
1. The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
2. Sula by Toni Morrison
3. Witness by Jamel Brinkley
4. Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
5. Undersong by Audre Lorde
Noah (he/they) is an Off-Site Bookseller and the Programs Assistant at Loyalty Bookstores, helping to make sure our events run smoothly! Noah grew up in New Jersey (best bagels, undisputed) and graduated from Georgetown University. He is a literary agent at Triangle House Literary and is currently the editorial fellow for Roxane Gay Books and Grove Atlantic.
Top Five Favorite Books:
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
2. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
3. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
4. Ruthie Fear by Maxim Loskutoff
5. My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Sandie (she/her) has been with Loyalty Books Silver Spring since it first opened as a seasonal pop-up in 2018. A bookish Jane of all trades, Sandie loves working as a bookseller, high school library assistant, and professional book reviewer. She's also a freelance film critic and entertainment reporter who has written about movies, young adult/children's books, and pop culture for more than 20 years. She specializes in children's, YA, romance, and book-club-friendly fiction. Sandie lives in Silver Spring, Md. with her husband, three older children, and one adorable poodle.
Five of her recent and perennial favorites include:
1. Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo
2. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
3. The Lumatere Chronicles by Melina Marchetta
4. The Merci Suárez trilogy by Meg Medina
5. The Brown Sisters series by Talia Hibbert
Sybil (she/they) is a writer and video artist who grew up in Woodbridge, Virginia. A lover of books that inspire you to laugh, cry, or cook something delicious. Sybil first started at Loyalty in 2019 and recently returned to the team. Outside of the bookstore, Sybil can be found hugging trees, baking mouth-watering treats, and celebrating queer joy.
Five of their favorite books:
1. Mother Grains by Roxana Jullapat
2. Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough
3. There Should be Flowers by Jennifer Espinoza
4. Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters
5. Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi