Who We Are

Word Up Collective Meeting 2018Word Up Collective Meeting 2018

Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria is operated by a collective of 60+ neighborhood residents. Since Word Up’s founding in 2011, approximately 1,000 neighbors have been trained as volunteers. We practice horizontal leadership, seeking consensus as much as possible, though weighting decision-making power to those who will execute the work.

Currently, the collective consists of a mix of salaried staff and volunteers, after being 100% volunteer-run for our first 6 years in operation. While we have refined our practices as a collective over the years, we continue to work on a daily basis with members of our wider community on how the bookstore can meet the needs of all in our collective sphere. To read about our current staff members and to find out how best to reach us, please see below.

Word Up is legally structured as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and is the assumed name of Seven Stories Institute. (More on Seven Stories Institute’s pre–Word Up history to come.) Our nonprofit board of directors is listed below.

 
Veronica Santiago Liu

Veronica Santiago Liu, Founder & General Coordinator (she/her)

Veronica Santiago Liu is the founder and general coordinator of the collective that operates Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria and serves as the executive director for Seven Stories Institute. Prior/concurrent to that, she was managing editor then senior editor for more than a decade at Seven Stories Press, where she currently contributes as an editor at large. Veronica cut her teeth in bookselling 20 years ago as book buyer’s assistant and website producer at Kim’s Video and Music, and in publishing 19 years ago as the co-founder of Fractious Press. She was an inaugural member of the Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), and serves on the boards of New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association and Media Freedom Foundation, the advisory board for Healthy Families Washington Heights, and the community advisory board for freeform radio station WFMU. Veronica has been a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree and an honorable mention for the ABA’s inaugural Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. The Manhattan Borough President's Office (MBPO) declared “Veronica Santiago Liu Appreciation Day” on February 28, 2019, for her arts and civic work including Word Up, and the MBPO and the National Dominican Day Parade jointly honored her as an "Adopted Dominican" in August 2022. Veronica has served as a judge for CLMP’s Firecracker Award for Fiction, Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and the Story Prize, and as a literature division panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts. Raised in Toronto, Veronica is a 21-year resident of Washington Heights.

Carolina Valencia

Carolina Valencia, Assistant General Coordinator & Event Manager (she/her/ella)

Carolina is a Colombian-American resident of NYC but was raised across the bridge in New Jersey. She attended Boston University from where she holds a Communications degree with a concentration in Public Relations. She first started at Word Up as a summer intern, continued as a volunteer, and started as the Assistant General Coordinator in May 2019. Carolina is also the Event Manager, helps coordinate Uptown Reads, and manages much of Word Up's social media. She loves non-fiction, comics, and walking dogs.

Emmanuel AbreuEmmanuel Abreu, Founding Collective Member & Video Manager

Emmanuel is a lifetime Washington Heights/Inwood resident. He has worked as a photographer and videographer for over 10 years and has worked with local community organizations for most of his career. Right now he works as the website manager, among other jobs at Word Up, and as the communications associate at local community theatre organization, People's Theatre Project.



 Michael Tencer, Inventory Manager & Sales Administration

Michael is a freelance editor, writer, indexer, and New Yorker. His book AFFIRMISMS has been published by the venerable Bathroom Books and will undoubtedly remain terminally available at Word Up. In addition to doing sales administration for Word Up, he's half the web design squad at Spark Blossom and all the maintenance crew for British poet J.H. Prynne's bibliography.

 

Amel Derras-Chouk, Fundraising Coordinator

Amel is a late-stage graduate student studying physics at CUNY. She enjoys reading fiction, getting sucked into science, and going to the beach. A Word Up collective member since 2017, Amel has recently taken on donation tracking duties.

 

 


Teaching Artists and Program Facilitators

Memphis WashingtonMemphis Washington, Facilitator of Q&T Community Writers' Group & Highbridge Cleanups

Memphis Washington is a Harlem-raised bookseller, facilitator, writer, and student based in Uptown NYC. Memphis has facilitated diverse programs and workshops for youth and adults, virtually and in-person, in areas including writing, disability awareness, environmental justice, and LGBTQ+ cultural competency. Memphis has worked, volunteered, and interned with Word Up Community Bookshop, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, CB 12 LGBTQ+ Youth Task Force, NYC Parks Dept. & Natural Areas Conservancy, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and UMass Archives. Memphis facilitates the Blickity Black Book Club and Q & T Writing Group at Word Up. Memphis currently studies Earth Environmental Systems Science (B.Sc.) at City College of New York and interns at Natural Areas Conservancy.


Keyholders

Active as of October 2022:
Emmanuel Abreu, Gio Andollo, Elizabeth Castelli, Karina Ciprian, Marisol Cruz, Amel Derras-Chouk, Katie Duiven,* Becky Fullan, Reynaldo García Pantaleón, Nicole Gervasio, Daniella Gitlin, Will Glass, Stephany Hernandez,* Rachel Lederer, Veronica Liu, Michelle McGrath,* Charlie Keys McKay, Nikolas Nyby,* Leslie Peterson, Michael Tencer, Ann Tritschler, Carolina Valencia, Memphis Washington, Rishauna Zumberg  *Recirculation


Board Members

D'Lonra Ellis

D'Lonra Ellis

D’Lonra C. Ellis is the General Counsel for the Oakland Athletics, where she works on all of the organization’s legal matters, including its intellectual property, real estate, employment, commercial, and government affairs matters.   She is also an Adjunct Professor at UC Hastings College of Law, where she teaches Professional Sports Law and the Corporate Counsel Externships.  Prior to joining the Oakland Athletics, D’Lonra was the General Counsel of Aspire Public Schools, a non-profit charter management organization that runs over thirty-five schools in California and Tennessee; a Director and Senior Corporate Counsel in the intellectual property, marketing and advertising group at Gap, Inc.; and an associate in the litigation practice of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk and Rabkin (now Arnold & Porter). D'Lonra currently sits on the Board of Seven Stories Institute, which runs a non-profit bookstore collective in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City and Bay Area Legal Aid, which provides legal aid service to low income residents throughout the Bay Area. She received her BA in Architecture, Preservation, and Planning from Columbia University and her JD from Stanford Law School.

Sita Frederick

Sita Frederick

Sita Frederick is a Dominican, British-Canadian and American arts professional, choreographer, performer, mother and facilitator from Washington Heights and New Jersey. As a dancer, Sita performed with Urban Bush Women, Arthur Aviles Typical Theater, and Merian Soto Performance Practice. Her multi-disciplinary projects explore themes of power, colonization, migration, community, race, gender and culture. Bronx-based arts organization, Pepatian, recently produced a documentary film about Latina choreographers featuring a collaboration with Marion Ramirez and Ana “Rokafela” Garcia. Last fall, Sita was the choreographic consultant on Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater’s new musical ¡Guaracha! During the COVID19 quarantine, she partnered with Cumbe Center of African and Diaspora Dance to produce an Afro-Dominican dance workshop video series with various collaborators for older adults. Sita has worked as a teaching artist for many arts organizations, and as an arts administrator for Manhattan New Music Project, Urban Arts Partnership, and most recently as the Director of Community Engagement at Lincoln Center Education. Sita is a mentor for Women of Color in the Arts’ Leadership through Mentorship program. She has volunteered on the DanceNYC Advisory Committee and is currently consulting for the organization. Frederick holds a Master of Fine Arts in New Media Art and Performance from Long Island University, Brooklyn.

Daniella Gitlin

Daniella Gitlin is a writer, translator, editor, filmmaker, and educator. She is currently a PhD candidate in NYU’s Comparative Literature Department pursuing a Certificate in Media and Culture, and holds a graduate assistantship at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute. Daniella’s English translation of Argentine author Rodolfo Walsh’s 1957 book-length work of investigative journalism, Operation Massacre, was published by Seven Stories Press in 2013. Her writing and translations have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, Huffington Post, and CineAction, among other publications, and she is currently at work on a book about Israel. Daniella received a BA from Princeton University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. 

Myong Jin

Photo and bio to come!