Lisa Knudsen, executive director of the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPiBA) announced Friday that she is retiring at the end of this year. Knudsen has been executive director of MPiBA since 1987.
In a letter to MPiBA members, including 167 independent bookstores in 13 western and southwestern states, Knudsen wrote that she is looking forward to spending more time in her garden, reading all the books she’s amassed over the years, and volunteering as a reading tutor in local schools in Fort Collins, Colo. The MPiBA board will begin the process of hiring a new executive director after MPiBA’s trade show ends in Denver on Sept. 25.
Knudsen is the third executive director of a regional booksellers association to resign this year. Susan Walker, the executive director of the Midwest Booksellers Association (MBA), announced she is resigning at the end of the year, to move to North Carolina to care for her aging parents. Jim Dana, executive director of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association, is retiring after GLiBA’s trade show the weekend of October 8-10 to join the Peace Corps as an education volunteer in Lesotho. The boards of those two regional bookseller associations are each currently conducting a search for a new executive director; interviews of applicants have been scheduled to take place before MBA’s trade show begins on September 30 and before GLiBA begins on October 8.
