Women & Children First is undergoing a generational leadership change as co-owner Lynn Mooney retires after 12 years running the feminist bookstore and a staffer of several years takes her place.
Raven Stubbs, who has worked in various roles at Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark St., since 2020, is assuming the role of co-owner with Sarah Hollenbeck when Mooney retires at the end of September. Stubbs and Hollenbeck will each own 50% of the business.
The ownership transition started taking shape a few years ago when Mooney first told staffers of her plan to retire, she said.
“I turn 65 in September, and that’s a traditional time to start thinking about retirement,” Mooney said. “And for the sake of the mission of the store, it did feel important to make space for younger leadership.”
Stubbs, 35, is a Black queer artist and educator who improved Women & Children First’s online sales infrastructure during the COVID pandemic before taking on various other roles at the bookstore, including helping develop the store’s HR policies.
Mooney and Hollenbeck said Stubbs brought a fresh perspective to a bookstore that has long wrestled with balancing its feminist mission with the realities of operating a for-profit business.
“What Raven has always brought to the table is her ability to mind both of those things with a lot of care and attention,” said Hollenbeck, who bought the business with Mooney in 2014 from founders Linda Bubon and Ann Christophersen.
Bubon and Christophersen founded the bookstore in Lincoln Park in 1979. It later moved to Andersonville, where it helped revitalize the area. The store has been a foundational part of the feminist, lesbian, and overall LGBTQ+ community, bringing in authors of all backgrounds. Bubon, Christophersen and the store itself are in the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.
Hollenbeck said their transition into ownership more than a decade ago did not include an extended period of training alongside the outgoing owners. So Mooney told staff about her retirement plans years in advance so whoever took her place could have time to learn the full business operations.
Stubbs expressed interest in co-ownership about three years ago, and has spent the time since then learning different parts of the business and seeing how its operations change over time.
“Getting the opportunity to experience these changes throughout the seasons was very important,” Stubbs said.
Stubbs was born and raised in Detroit before attending Illinois Wesleyan University to study theater arts and ethnodramatic theater. She then earned a master’s degree in education management and public policy from Harvard University.
Stubbs’ work has spanned theater, education, community organizing and organizational management. She currently serves as executive director of Playmakers Laboratory, leading the youth creative writing nonprofit while working part-time at Women & Children First, but she plans to step down from that role to work full-time at the bookstore.
“My work has always been with my community and with people who wanted to talk very intentionally about how to care for each other, and not just [interpersonally], but through systems and structures,” Stubbs said.
As a Black queer woman, Stubbs said she brings a different perspective to a feminist bookstore that has historically been owned by white women.
“But that representation is not enough,” Stubbs said. “In what ways are my identities informing how we think of curation? In what ways are my identities informing how we think about community?”
Stubbs described Women & Children First as historically a “very white women’s store” in Andersonville, which is a predominantly white neighborhood. She said her work will include examining the store’s history and practices, which have sometimes been unintentionally anti-Black.
“We have a 45-year history of those unintentional harms and white ownership,” Mooney said. “So what Raven is taking on is very complicated.”
At the same time, Stubbs emphasized the importance of the generations of people who built and sustained Women & Children First before her. The bookstore’s multigenerational community is one of its strengths.
Stubbs pointed to Mooney as an example of the knowledge and experience she hopes to carry forward.
“She has so much wisdom and knows so much, and there’s so much insight that I’m just constantly trying to absorb,” Stubbs said.
Mooney’s retirement caps a long career at Women & Children First that began years before she became co-owner.
Throughout her time at the store, Mooney helped found the Chicagoland Independent Booksellers Association; served in leadership roles with the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association and Andersonville Chamber of Commerce; and developed longstanding relationships with publishers.
But Mooney said she’s most proud of the book clubs she has led and the communities that formed around them.
At one point, Mooney led three groups at the bookstore, including Classics of Women’s Literature, which she has participated in for 20 years. All three groups will continue under new leadership after she retires.
“The strength of the communities that coalesce around those groups, the kind of trust, as well as the intellectual exchange, the creative exchanges that happen in those conversations … those feel important,” Mooney said.
Mooney said retiring feels “bittersweet,” but she is looking forward to having more time for other interests and responsibilities. Her partner is having knee replacement surgery soon, so Mooney expects to spend the beginning of retirement focused on caregiving.
Beyond that, Mooney hopes to spend more time volunteering as an observer in immigration court and tutoring, drawing on her previous career as a mathematics editor.
“I have a whole season just to think about what’s important,” Mooney said.
At the bookstore, Stubbs and Hollenbeck plan to expand its community programming and revive the long-defunct Feminist Bookstore Network, which was created in 1976 to connect feminist booksellers around the world. Stubbs said the network could allow for conversations about what it means to be a feminist bookstore today.
“Our feminism can’t rest with most of our books being written by women,” Stubbs said. “It has to be rooted in action.”
Hollenbeck and Stubbs also plan to build on the bookstore’s focus on disability, including its disability studies collection. Stubbs is deaf, while Hollenbeck also identifies as disabled.
Stubbs added that the ownership transition is also about knowing when it’s time for one generation to carry forward the work of another.
“We need to let y’all rest—that’s part of honoring your elders,” Stubbs said. “You have to let them rest and honor their work by continuing it.”
