Dear Friends of W&CF,

After twelve years as the co-owner of Women & Children First bookstore, Lynn Mooney will retire at the end of September 2026. Together with current co-owner Sarah Hollenbeck, Lynn has hand picked her colleague, Raven Stubbs Stone, to be her successor. Raven has worked at Women & Children First in various roles since 2020, and is thrilled to join Sarah as the bookstore’s new co-owner.

Lynn was a W&CF bookseller and manager, before becoming a co-owner in 2014. During her tenure, Lynn served as the president of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association (GLIBA), an officer on the board of the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce, and a key organizer of the wildly popular annual Chicagoland Independent Bookstore Day crawl. Book groups have been a focus of Lynn’s, leading as many as three book groups (Classics of Women’s Literature, Women Aging with Wisdom & Grace Discussion Group, and the Banned Books group) at one time. It’s a testament to Lynn’s care and cultivation of community that all three of these groups have decided to continue on after her retirement, led by other colleagues and friends of the store. 

Lynn is the Louise Penny expert; the one who asks to pet your dog and can instantly identify its breed; the one whose shelf talkers are written in penmanship so neat it makes school teachers weep with joy; the steady presence in our receiving area “playing with the books” or in the stacks offering you a thoughtful recommendation.  

When learning of Lynn’s imminent retirement, Larry Law, executive director of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association, wrote: “Lynn Mooney has shaped the independent bookselling community in ways that are impossible to overstate. A former GLIBA board president, bookseller, mentor and advocate, Lynn has spent decades generously sharing her knowledge, leadership and time with fellow bookstores while helping move our industry toward being more inclusive, sustainable and representative of the communities we serve. Through her leadership at Women & Children First alongside Sarah Hollenbeck, the store became the inaugural recipient of the Great Lakes Bookstore of the Year Award, reflecting the values and excellence Lynn has championed throughout her career.”

Lynn also served on the board and was an officer of the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce for many years. Laura Austin, executive director of that organization, says: “Lynn loves the small business community and takes great pride in local ownership, especially women-owned businesses. She champions and uplifts the community in ways that are genuine and humble–never showy, never attention-seeking. She has always led with the belief that we are stronger because of one another, and that philosophy is reflected in everything she does.”

Born and raised in Detroit, Raven Stubbs Stone is an artist, educator, and consultant. She first joined the Women & Children First as the online sales lead, building out our online store processes during a world pandemic. While being the Executive Director for Playmakers Lab, an arts education non-profit, Raven has been our first manager of people & culture. In this role, Raven has piloted HR procedures and grown the pedagogy of the store as it wrestles with its existence at the intersection of mission and business, and the contradictions within. Raven created the store’s first comprehensive employee manual in 2023, which is an impressive document that directly addresses the tensions and contradictions within the store, and how we collaborate to address them. 

Raven is the one who can chat with you about Black feminist theory and vampire romantasy in the same breath! She’s often behind the register or in the shipping area, meticulously sending off packages to customers with personalized, hand-written notes. Her event introductions are so memorable and engaging that she is now requested by bestselling authors when they go on book tour. She is a connoisseur of fancy snacks and good coffee. She is the queen of the disarming follow-up question because if she’s talking to you, she is really talking to you. 

The new co-ownership team does not come with any new faces or dramatic overnight changes. That being said, Raven and Sarah share an aligned vision for the future of this iconic feminist space. They plan to expand community programming as well as relaunch the now defunct Feminist Bookstore Network. Created in 1976, the Network served as a way to "keep women booksellers around the world together" and published Feminist Bookstore News, a semi-regular newsletter. The new co-owners will strive to continue toward a more feminist workplace that values the wholeness of each of their booksellers. 

Lynn is looking forward to devoting more time to her passion for the outdoors, and finally, finally, finally getting to read only the books she wants to read! 

“When you are in the thick of running a small business, all you see is the mess, the to-do list,” says Hollenbeck. “But then I walk into the store on a Saturday afternoon and see it packed with young folks having passionate conversations about queer theory and I am awed that we did what Lynn and I promised to do in that business proposal we wrote twelve years ago. With our incredible booksellers, we have built a space that is a home to the next generation of feminists. I’m so excited to keep on building it with Raven.” 

In the coming month, please come visit and say thank you to Lynn for her years of service to Women & Children First. We will miss her steadiness, her tirelessness, tidiness, thoughtfulness, and care—and we know you will, too! The store is in the early stages of working with Tracy Baim, founder of Windy City Times, to begin an archival project devoted to the bookstore’s history and capturing the stories of not only Lynn, but also the store’s co-founders Ann Christophersen and Linda Bubon. Who knows, the project may someday become a book! 

With love & books,

Your Local Feminist Bookstore