Hey Y’all!!!!
My name is Krystle and I am the highly educated, beautifully melanated face behind the brand! This brand was a result of pressure and perseverance which birthed a passion. I’m a Jersey girl through and through, but have lived in RVA since 2008. I have tats, locs, piercings, and love every piece of me! I love pups, plants, music, traveling, and reading! Self-care is my love language!!!!! I’ve been an avid reader for as long as I could read. I found myself escaping into urban fiction literary works early in life as a way to cope and keep pushing forward after many life traumas. I have a doctoral degree in psychology (can we say hella student loans), and opened my therapy practice and began specializing in working with survivors of sexual trauma because…Me Too! To help decompress I found myself escaping into fantasy books. With a continued desire to help others I started a nonprofit in 2019 to work with youth in South Africa after participating in a service trip to South Africa. Though I love both my practice and nonprofit work, I still found myself needing to escape. Then in 2020 COVID hit and shut the world down. It was then that I took the time to consider what I felt was missing and would lead to fewer desires to escape. I’ve always played with the idea of owning a bookstore, but never saw it as a reality until I gave voice to the idea. What I truly wanted was a bookstore that centered authors who look like me and characters I could relate to. I wanted to not walk into a bookstore and feel like the only times I could find books I could relate to was during Black History Month. I wanted to feel an entire vibe walking through the store. I wanted to see culture, feel culture, and experience community when I entered the space.