Our Staff
Owner Frank Reiss started in the antiquarian book business at San Francisco's Acorn Books in the early 1980s. His favorite writers include Charles Portis, Flannery O'Connor, Philip Roth, Wendell Berry and Nathanael West. He also has a deep interest in Ancient Greece and Rome, country music and baseball, all of which are reflected on the shelves of A Cappella Books. A past president of the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association, Frank has written reviews books and commentary on book-related issues for the San Francisco Examiner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Paste Magazine. Presently he conducts author interviews for the radio show "Cover to Cover," on Georgia Public Broadcasting.
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In the not really so distant past, Glen Thrasher spent his time making music, publishing fanzines, organizing noise festivals and spinning records at college radio stations. More recently he spends most of his time working at some little book store just trying to survive while causing the least suffering possible. All the while he gets louder and angrier and more radical in his thinking. This it not the way its supposed to go as a fellow reaches his declining years, but they know what they can do if they can't take a joke. Glen's reading list continues to get likewise louder, etc. and recently includes: Cornelius Castoriadis, James Howard Kunstler, Percival Everett, Jeffrey St. Clair, Ward Churchill, William Blum, Alfred F. Young, C.L.R. James, James Boggs, Walter Rodney, Dave Dellinger, I.F. Stone, Regis Debray, and always such masters as Joyce, Kafka, Borges, and Nabokov.
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Chris Fanning is currently finishing up his MA in English for Northumbria University. His thesis is about Bob Dylan and the traditional ballad. After having spent the recent past dividing his time between England and America, it looks like Atlanta will be graced with his presence for the foreseeable future. In his spare time he enjoys dabbling in music, academia, and travel. Aside from Dylan, a few of his favorite writers include Salman Rushdie, John Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Edgar Allan Poe.
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Anne Vagts is a Wisconsin-born ATL transplant. She recently finished an Americorps term of service in the Atlanta Public School system where she worked with a team of volunteers as a tutor and after school program director. She is preparing to go back to school to earn a Masters Degree in Library Science. Like many A Cappella employees, Anne has a wide variety of book interests. However, she is a sucker for 19th Century Fiction, folk tales, and Graphic Novels. Anne would also like to add that the secret ingredient to all Wisconsin cheeses (and to all Wisonsonites) is PRIDE.
Courtney Conroy is a recent graduate of Georgia State University's English Department. She is pleased to join the A Cappella staff following a mild traumatic brain injury and a brief stint in the corporate world. She counts Nabokov, Marquez, Djuna Barnes and John Fowles among her favorite authors. In addition to fiction, she enjoys history, literary/cultural theory and movie musicals. When she is not pushing coffee or selling books, Courtney is contemplating grad school or other means of escape.
Beverly Bryan moved to Atlanta from Las Vegas, where she worked as a reporter. She has lived in New York, Pennsylvania and Florida. She wants to stop moving but she doesn't know how. Her favorite book is The Tale of Genji by the Lady Murasaki Shikibu but, mostly, she reads a lot of trash. Her articles on popular music and other matters of limited significance have appeared online and in actual newspapers and magazines. She loves the Internet, fancy beer and things that are old.
Chantal James returned at the beginning of 2009 from 14 months in Morocco, where she studied colloquial Arabic and wrote her first novel as a Fulbright fellow. She enjoys writers Chris Abani, Sandra Cisneros, Cynthia Ozick, Nurrudin Farah, among too many others to name. When she's not tending her post at your favorite independent bookstore she's enjoying a bare apartment, where she patiently courts the muses and waits for the revolution.