Ann Berlin

Owner

Ann Berlin has been in publishing since 1975, when she became an editor on The American Mineralogist, a geological journal, housed at the time at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She has spent the past 20 years heading up the Production Department in the Higher Education Division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Ann is a native of Salt Lake City, Utah. She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Utah and an MBA from New York University.

Ann recently enjoyed Jonathan Tropper's One Last Thing Before I Go and Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies. She and Ed are both fans of Dan Fesperman and Alan Furst.

Shirley Fergenson

Lead Bookseller, New Fiction

Literary fiction and memoir specialist, Shirley received her BA in American Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, and her MA in Fiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University. After raising four children, gardening, sewing, reading, and writing, she found one of her true passions as a bookseller at The Ivy. The other was her husband Arthur whom she met and married in The Ivy’s aisles.

Lea Burns

Director of Events

Lea was born in Baltimore and grew up in Mount Washington. She attended Drexel University in Philadelphia for her bachelor's degree in English and master's degree in Library and Information Science. After completing her degrees, Lea returned home to Baltimore to find work in the literary community and was thrilled to accept the position of Director of Events at The Ivy Bookshop. Lea enjoys reading a variety of books and is fond of young adult fiction and children's books. When she's not reading, Lea enjoys cooking, hiking to mountain tops and riding her 1974 Schwinn Collegiate around town.

Elizabeth Phelan

Operations Manager

Elizabeth Phelan earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in professional writing from Towson University, as well as an English-language teaching certificate from The International Language Centre in Paris. A bibliophile and traveler, Elizabeth prefers nineteenth and twentieth-century American and European literature, adventure biographies, and travelogues, especially about Italy where she used to live. She considers herself a grammar geek and would actually enjoy diagramming a sentence.

Nancy Chambers

Book Advisor, Art, Architecture and Interior Design

Art, architecture, photography, science, and new fiction/non-fiction are all areas under Nancy's purview. Nancy spent 18 years with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine within the Welch Medical Library Reference department. She does scientific library research, grant writing and editing. She holds a BA in philosophy/psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park and has done graduate work in the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine. Nancy's passion is attending art exhibitions in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and London. Recent memorable art seminars and lectures include The Mellon Series.

Jessica Baldwin

Book Advisor, Classics, Literary Criticism and Sports

Jessica Baldwin was born and raised in Sparks, Maryland. She attended St. Paul's School for Girls in Brooklandville, then moved to New York City to pursue her degree in philosophical fiction writing at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. She is currently completing her master's thesis in Humanities at Towson University; her thesis relates theories of alienation and repression as seen in the works of Nietzsche and Freud. Jessica enjoys reading literary criticism, philosophy, biography/memoir, and anything related to sports or psychology. Her favorite authors include Michel Houellebecq, Soren Kierkegaard, and Edmund Burke.

Larry Miller

Book Advisor, History and Biography

Larry is a graduate of the University of Maryland (College Park) and the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana). He retired in 2008 after teaching in the Baltimore City Public Schools for 38 years, the last 28 of which were at Baltimore City College where he served as a social studies teacher. Larry is thrilled to see his former students and their parents when they shop at The Ivy. Larry's primary interest is history, and he loves to have conversations with readers where they share good books and perspectives on the past. Larry also devours mysteries: Lee Child, George Pelecanos and Alan Furst are current favorites. He also enjoys fiction suggested by his Ivy co-workers; Jane Gardam's Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat were super!

Rona Sue London

Book Advisor, Judaica and Children's

Rona recently found a wonderful new home at The Ivy, where she wears several hats. She works on the front window displays, reaches out to the Jewish community and helps in the children's section, where she loves helping people find the perfect books for our youngest readers. She recently developed the first in a series of "Book Club Banter" packets, exploring books in depth that have a special appeal to book clubs.

After graduating with her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Masters of Art in Teaching from Maryland Institute College of Art, Rona ran her own graphic design firm and worked as an art teacher in Baltimore County. She retired to be a stay-at-home mom to her two sons, volunteering at their schools - where her favorite activity was running the book fair, of course! Rona is also a freelance writer for the Baltimore Jewish Times and an after school art teacher at Roland Park Elementary. When she is not reading, she loves the ballet, theater and symphony.

Jessica Whitaker

Book Advisor, Fiction

Jessica Whitaker is a native of Florida and in the process of earning a B.A. in History through the online degree program at University of Illinois. Her passions include art, photography, esoteric manuscripts and British comedy. As a reader she gravitates toward a variety of genres, though she's most fond of classics, young adult fantasy and historical novels.

Linda Knox

Book Club Coordinator

Linda Knox was born in Indianapolis and graduated from Mills College in California. She served with the Red Cross in Korea for one year and, after moving to Baltimore, received her Master of Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University. She worked at St. Paul's School for 24 years, as Middle School librarian and then as the Coordinator for the school's Sesquicentennial celebration. Her interests include the theater, tennis, bicycling, guitar, travel and, of course, reading. Travels have included Thailand, Morocco, Mexico and Europe. Besides bookselling, she works with book club activities. Favorite books this year have included The Art of Fielding (Harbach), State of Wonder (Pachett), The Hare with Amber Eyes (de Waal) and novellas by Edward St. Aubyn.

Lucy Burchell

Book Advisor, Mysteries and Sports

Lucy Burchell is a junior at Bryn Mawr School. She has been shopping at the Ivy since she was six years old. She loves reading, writing and foreign languages. She also loves music and listens to a variety of different genres.

Kit Brennen

Book Advisor, Children's

After graduating from Garrison Forest last summer, Kit spent five months studying in Munich and Berlin. Since December, she has been working at The Ivy and getting ready to attend the University of Chicago, where she plans to study Classics, next fall. Some of her favorite authors are William Faulkner, Ovid, Virginia Woolf and Vergil. When she's not at The Ivy, you can find her taking classes at Baltimore Clayworks, wandering around the Walters Art Museum or studying French, German, Latin or Korean.

Joyce Holbrook

Book Advisor, Gardening and Children's

Joyce is a longtime resident of Mount Washington. She has an eclectic background, which began with a degree in Art History. From there her path took her to being a producer for public television in New Mexico, then to New York where she worked in the art world. She eventually returned to her native Maryland, where she worked as a private chef and gardener and a teacher of the very young. She has a special affinity for art, photography, gardening, cooking and children's books but also loves literature and poetry, both classic and contemporary.

Rebecca Oppenheimer

Director, Store Promotion

Rebecca Oppenheimer first worked at The Ivy Bookshop for three years after finishing high school. Now, having earned a degree in American Studies from Towson University and made a foray into the corporate world, she is glad to be back where she belongs. She reads a little of everything but is especially partial to classics, history, biography and speculative fiction. Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and Samuel Richardson's Clarissa are the two saddest books she's ever read.

Ed Berlin

Owner

Co-owner Ed Berlin enjoys reading international relations, espionage and European history. Ed received his undergraduate degree from UMBC in history and a law degree from the University of Maryland. He also has a master’s degree in foreign policy from New York University. He teaches in the Political Science Department at UMBC in Baltimore.

Prior to moving to Baltimore, Ed held executive positions at Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Thomson Financial in New York.

A few of Ed’s most recent reads include: Laura Lippman’s And When She Was Good; The Cold War, by John Lewis Gaddis; Monsoon, by Robert D. Kaplan; and Olen Steinhauer’s The Nearest Exit.