The Street Books Team
Staff • Board Members • Emeritus
Staff
Austin Allstadt
Office Manager/Bookkeeper
Austin is the office manager and bookkeeper at Street Books. They also serve as a representative payee at Multnomah County where they get to help vulnerable individuals manage their money and navigate financial systems. In their spare time Austin plays soccer and cuddles their cat, Sticky Rice.
austin@streetbooks.org
Monica Beemer
Operations & Development Director
Monica Beemer, MSW, was Executive Director of Sisters of the Road, a nonprofit cafe and community for people experiencing houselessness in Portland, Oregon from 2001 to 2013. She served as Station Co-Manager of KBOO Community Radio from 2014-2017 with community leader and cultural educator, Mic Crenshaw. She joined the Street Books team in February, 2022 as an Interim Coordinator to help with development and staff expansion. She also serves on the board of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, where she has helped in a variety of roles for over 10 years. During COVID she built 45, 30-gallon handwashing stations and organized an army of good people to maintain them with delicious soap, water and goodwill. She is from both rural (Newport) and urban (Portland) Oregon and is passionate about community organizing and individual and systems change for the good of all. monica@streetbooks.org
morgan Grant
morgan is a student and facilitator with a deep love for books, plants, community, jazz, and most recently, birdwatching. She is devoted to the lifelong journey of co-creating a world rooted in dignity & care for all.
Jon Hallman
Street Librarian
Jon Hallman has been a lover of books since his first stack of comics he got when he was seven. When not working with Street Books, he sells groceries and he also writes and creates zines and independent comics and is a member of Helioscope Studios in PDX. If you see him out and about, please tell him what you're reading right now.
Josh Pollock
Library Operations Coordinator
Josh is a poet and a malcontent. He translated José Vicente Anaya’s Híkuri (Peyote), (The Operating System, 2020) and Salvador Elizondo’s The Secret Crypt (Dalkey Archive, 2022). His poems have been in jubilat, Diagram, FE, and other magazines. He lives with his partner and two kids in Portland, OR, where he likes to take walks and talk to people about books and psychedelic plants.
joshua@streetbooks.org
Rob G
Street Librarian
Rob G is a PDX local and longtime lover of books, adventure, and possibilities. They are interested in mutual aid, minimalism, and maximizing human freedom and agency, especially for those who are most vulnerable.
Kerry Robison
Street Librarian
Kerry Robison came to Portland in 2009. She loves to read and lives in N. Portland with her husband and their dog Charlie. She spent many years on the streets of Portland until moving in to permanent housing last year. You can find her running a Street Books library shift on Fridays at The People's Depot under the Morrison bridge with her book wagon, a smile, and usually a story or two!
Yimei Shao
Street Librarian
Yimei is a community organizer, and cat parent to Buster Onion and Cosmo's Moon. A fast talker, but trying to slow down in life, they are liable to drop whatever they're doing to sit in the sun whenever they can find it. They love to grow food, cook, eat, and share it all, too.
Board Members
Leah Benson
Board Member
Leah Benson (she/her) was born and raised in rural Wisconsin, but has called Portland home for the past fifteen years. In her professional life, she runs a small consulting practice providing nonprofit and small business strategy, organizational development, and facilitation services. In previous lives she's been the founder and owner of a local bike shop (Gladys Bikes in NE Portland), a community organizer for Oregon Tradeswomen, a volunteer coordinator at IRCO, an event planner, and a HIV counselor. Interwoven with her paid and volunteer work, you can find Leah watching 35mm films at the Hollywood Theater, birding at Whitaker Ponds, riding her bike to the top of every peak in the city limits, and coaching and performing at community storytelling events.
Ed Edmo
Board Member
Ed Edmo is a Shoshone-Bannock poet, playwright, performer, traditional storyteller, tour guide and lecturer on Northwest tribal culture. He offers guided tours to the She Who Watches petroglyphs on the Columbia Gorge, as well as to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon’s high desert country. He conducts workshops, traditional storytelling performances, dramatic monologues, and lectures on such issues as cultural understanding and awareness, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental health. He enjoys working with both children and adults in educational and other settings. He serves as a consultant to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Carol, his son, John, and his daughter, Se-ah-dum and her daughter.
Ben Hodgson
Board Member, Inventory Specialist
Ben Hodgson, (he/him), was a computer technician in the air force and worked as a cab driver for many years. He is the co-author with Laura Moulton of Loaners: The Making of a Street Library. He is currently a board member of Street Books and has worked as a street librarian, speaker and inventory specialist.
Betsy Holzgraf
Board Secretary
Betsy Holzgraf, Board Secretary (she/her), is a retired elementary school librarian and classroom teacher who has more interests than she has time. Outdoors she skis, rides her bike, golfs, hikes and takes urban walks around Portland. Indoors she enjoys various crafts, especially quilting and making greeting cards from photos, and of course, she is never without a book. A lifelong book lover, she has books in every room of her house. Betsy has lived in Buffalo, NY, the Portland area, Corvallis, Lake Tahoe and San Diego and back to the Portland area where she and her husband raised their two sons and have been in their house for 36 years.
Michelle Lin
Board Member
Michelle Lin (they/she) is a queer child of immigrants who grew up in the deep south. Their embodiment of these identities, their intersections, and all their complexities inspires them to cultivate intentional community, facilitate healing spaces, and move towards collective liberation. Michelle guides outdoor trips for Wild Diversity and works at the Oregon Food Bank to support statewide partners to address the root causes of hunger.
Pati Morán
Board Member
Pati Morán (she/ella) is a longtime Street Books board member and Spanish bilingual Librarian serving humans ages 0- 100 since 2011. She has worked with public libraries in Oxnard, Oakland, Hillsboro, and currently with Multnomah County Library. Prior to joining Street Books, Pati lived by Peter Golkin's quote: “My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library." Street Books showed her that by merging the two a bicycle library can lift up an entire community.
Laura Moulton
Executive Director & Street Librarian
Laura is a writer and artist living in Portland, Oregon. She founded Street Books in 2011, and co-author of the book Loaners: The Making of a Street Library, with Ben Hodgson. She has taught writing in public schools, prisons, and teen shelters. She is an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark College, and leads writing and art residencies in Portland high schools for Literary Arts.
laura@streetbooks.org
Diana Rempe
Community Outreach Director & Librarian
Diana never met a person she didn’t want to talk with. A Texan by birth, a community psychologist by training and a street librarian by choice, she spends most of her time with her family, riding her bike, walking her dog, and reading poetry, fiction, and memoir. Diana believes everyone deserves a safe, stable place to live and is absolutely convinced that in a country and city with so much wealth, this is entirely possible.
diana@streetbooks.org
Tracel Rimel
Board Treasurer
Tracy Rimel, Board Treasurer (she/her), has a degree in Economics and has worked extensively in the field of accounting and finance. For the last four years she has been the Business Manager at Central City Concern, and she’s been doing non-profit accounting for about 20 years. She loves books and has a secret dream to become a short-story writer. In her free time, if she is not reading, she enjoys biking, yoga, and cross-country skiing.
Karen Russell
Board Member
Karen Russell is the author of three story collections, the novella Sleep Donation, and the novel, Swamplandia! She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, and a Shirley Jackson Award. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in SE Portland with her husband, son and daughter, and Gerald Bubbles, an enigmatic sky-blue beta fish. They are all huge readers (except for Gerald) and proud members of the Street Books family. Loaners is one of Russell's all-time favorite books.
Robin Schauffler
Board President
Robin Schauffler, Board Chair (she/her), is a writer, retired teacher, watercolor artist, hiker/camper/ backpacker, avid reader—and when there isn’t a global pandemic, a lover of travel. She has written extensively about the three years she and her husband Peter lived and worked in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. You can read some of her stuff in Cargo Literary, Hawaii Pacific Review, Whistling Shade, The Fourth River, and Street Roots, among other places. She remembers first serving a meal at Blanchet House in about 1963, and has spent the past few decades connecting high school and middle school students with social service work, especially in issues of housing justice and outdoor stewardship.
robin@streetbooks.org
Paul Susi
Board Member
Paul Susi (he/him) is a writer, an educator, a social services professional, a theater artist and a community activist. Paul served as a Shelter Manager for Transition Projects, leading 6 different emergency homeless shelter programs in 5 years. As an actor, Paul toured an adaptation of The Iliad to 25+ prisons, schools, community centers and theaters. His writing has appeared in the Oregon Humanities Magazine and The Sunny Pages. He currently facilitates a mutual aid network replacing lost ID documents, and a volunteer prison pen pal program. He is the proud son of immigrants, a person of color, and he never went to college. He is proud and honored to serve on the Street Books Board of Directors.
Street Books emeritus
Marissa Sainte
Street Librarian
Marissa hails from Hood River, Oregon and worked at Artifact Books there, before Street Books wooed her west and she joined the librarian crew. She was a beloved librarian at the St. Francis shift in southeast Portland and at the Workers’ Center (Voz). She currently works at Microcosm Books in Portland.
Sofie Jokela
Street Librarian
Sofie hails from Minnesota and was the first Outpost Coordinator for Street Books. She is a beloved librarian and a stellar event planner. This past year she has focused on helping her dog Sal memorize poetry by Pablo Neruda.
Rachel Dawson
Street Librarian
Rachel is a longtime street librarian for Street Books and a lover of plants and animals. She lives and farms in Sandy, Oregon with her dog Maggie and other assorted animals.
Pépe Espinoza
Street Librarian, Emeritus
Pépe worked for some years as a street librarian, primarily at the MLK Workers’ Center, where he helped to organize the workers and was a friend to everybody. Library shifts were always twice as fun when Pépe was there, as he brought with him a keen empathy and attunement to every interaction.
Byrd
Board Member
Byrd is a librarian, archivist, researcher and blogger. She currently serves as a member of the advisory board for the forthcoming African American Museum in Portland, Oregon. She collects words, boasts a large collection of African American children's books, and isn't afraid to think!
Olive Alsept-Ellis
Street Librarian
Olive is a longtime librarian for Street Books and a beloved member of the team. She is known for both her brilliance and her ability to fall into friendly conversation with absolutely anybody. Her skills include knowledge of depth psychology, urban planning, film editing and production and making a fine bowl of ramen.
Nika Clark
Librarian Emeritus
Nika worked for Street Books in 2017 and brought her enthusiasm and upbeat scrap-titude to every library shift.
Redd Moon
Former Board Member & Street Librarian Emeritus
Redd was the first official street librarian hired in 2012 and became an essential part of helping to envision what the street library could someday be. After several years as a librarian, Redd served faithfully as a board member before stepping back to work on his own projects, including raising his superkid, Rowan, with his partner Amber.