A. N. Devers (she/her)
Proprietor

A. N. Devers is a rare book dealer, publisher, arts journalist, and editor based in London. Her first book, Train, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. In addition to running The Second Shelf and its eponymous magazine, she is an International Contributing Editor of A Public Space, and she has written for The Guardian, The New Yorker, New Republic, Lapham’s Quarterly, Lenny, Los Angeles Times, Longreads, The Paris Review, Prospect, Salon, Slate, Fine Books, and The Washington Post, among other publications.

Devers' piece that originated as a tweet, “This is How a Woman is Erased From Her Job”, documented how The Paris Review editor Brigid Hughes was omitted from the magazine's history as its second editor, and led to two New York Times corrections among many other corrections in periodicals, and the reinstatement of Hughes's name to the masthead as a former editor of The Paris Review in the Spring 2018 issue. 

She lives in North London with her six-year-old and can’t think of a time when she had free time, but when she has it, she likes to take a run in The Heath or go for a swim in the ponds. She is happiest rummaging through secondhand bookshops, writing, or foisting book recommendations on people, and with that in mind she wants to make sure you’ve read America’s greatest novelist Toni Morrison yet.

Kitty Hyde (she/her)

Founding bookseller, now emeritus (mostly), Hyde joined The Second Shelf in 2018 part-time after fleeing from a job as a law librarian. She was central to The Second Shelf’s Kickstarter’s launch and fulfillment of our first orders, researching and cataloging our initial stock, as well as helping The Second Shelf find a doormat moments before we opened for the first time. Whilst doing so, she also worked part-time at The Guardian as a research librarian before relocating to Manchester in early 2019. She still works here and there for The Second Shelf from afar, occasionally coming into London to helm the store so that staff may have holidays, thought not during the pandemic, of course. She collects stickers and is very serious about it. She thinks you should read Dorothy Whipple, Jean Rhys, and Noel Streatfeild.

Lauren La Tulip (she/her)

Founding bookseller, La Tulip worked at the New York Public Library before moving to London and working as a librarian for 10 years. She owns Bluestocking Books UK, a tour company focused on celebrating London’s bookshops. She joined The Second Shelf part-time in 2018 before there was a bookshop, and brought appreciated order to the stacks of books in a basement waiting for research and cataloging. She’s worn many important hats at The Second Shelf; her favorites include visiting libraries to research and catalogue our antiquarian books, and corresponding with archivists. In the shop she enjoys matching books to customers, and especially likes to recommend women writers that are funny, like Terry McMillan, and the acerbic Murial Spark. LaTulip reads graphic novels, mysteries, science fiction, and everything that has been recommended to her. She really, really loves bookshops.