Books Across Borders has chosen its 2025 Fall Fellows--U.S. booksellers who will visit the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Guadalajara International Book Fair.
Vannessa Martini of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Calif., will attend the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. She is the lead buyer at Green Apple and previously bought books for City Lights, where she learned from Paul Yamazaki the value of a good conversation over a good drink. Her first job was at her hometown library shelving books, and she has continued to shelve books ever since.
Three booksellers will attend the Guadalajara fair in December:
Barbara Cerda, co-founder of La Revo Books in Milwaukee, Wis., the state's only Latinx-focused bookstore. This year she is celebrating five years of Milwaukee's Biggest Free Library, an event that promotes literacy by bringing thousands of free books to families. She serves on the board of directors of the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association. Through her community work and dedication to accessible learning spaces, she hopes to inspire conversations about history and identity.
Stephen Krause, co-founder, book buyer, and a bookseller at Alienated Majesty Books in Austin, Tex. He has been in bookselling for over a decade at shops across the country, including Farley's Bookshop in New Hope, Pa., where he was introduced to small presses; Panoply Books in Lambertville, N.J., where he sold collectible art books and 400-year-old crumbling tomes; as well as Half Price Books on North Lamar Boulevard in Austin, the second largest Half Price in the country. His most recent gig before opening Alienated Majesty was at Malvern Books in Austin, a store renowned for exclusively stocking small press titles and works in translation. Now, at Alienated Majesty Books, he has helped to curate one of the largest selections of international literature, poetry, nonfiction, and comics in the region. He has also worked for the publishing houses New York Review Books and Dalkey Archive Press.
Lisa Moser, manager of Julia de Burgos Bookstore, the only bilingual, Latine-focused bookstore in Philadelphia, Pa. As part of the nonprofit Puerto Rican cultural center Taller Puertorriqueño, the bookstore is a vital literary and cultural hub for diasporic communities, showcasing authors from every Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking country in Latin America. During her five years as manager, Moser has expanded the store's visibility and impact through a carefully curated selection of books and community partnerships. She has also served on the organizing committee of Philadelphia's Latin American Book Fair. Connecting readers with books that reflect and affirm their intersecting identities is one of her greatest joys.
Late this fall, Books Across Borders will announce the Spring 2026 Fellows, who will attend the RISE Bookselling Conference in Verona, Italy; the Salone del Libro in Turin, Italy; and other fairs. All booksellers who applied during the 2025-26 application season remain eligible for these opportunities.
Books Across Borders is supported by Ingram Content Group, Frankfurter Buchmesse, FIL Guadalajara, Salone Libro Torino, RISE Bookselling, Europa Editions, Other Press, the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, Princeton University Press, NorthSouth Books, Shelf Awareness, the American Booksellers Association, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association, and the Great Lakes Independent Publishers Association.