NORTH FIGUEROA BOOKSHOP is a general interest bookstore in the heart of the historic Highland Park neighborhood of Northeast Los Angeles, a joint venture of Rare Bird and Unnamed Press, two Los Angeles–based independent book publishers, with the collaborative support of founding publisher sponsors, Grove Atlantic and MCD Books.
The store directly serves the neighborhoods of Highland Park, Glassell Park, and Eagle Rock, and is a beautiful, custom-design literary space that seeks to connect the independent publishing community with readers, booksellers, authors, and book lovers. The store's shelves hold a rotating selection of titles from our publishing partners, as well as a curated general interest selection with a focus on California history and literature, literature in translation, books in Spanish, and independent press publications.
We also operate a kiosk at historic Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, offering California literature, new releases, stationery, and travel accessories. The kiosk is open Friday and Saturday in the main terminal from 11am-6pm.
As publishers, Rare Bird and Unnamed have been collaborating on projects for the last few years. The first of which, Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness, a landmark two-volume retrospective of William T. Vollmann's photography, art, and printing, published in 2023.
UNNAMED PRESS
Unnamed Press is a leading independent publisher of fiction and nonfiction, based in Los Angeles and founded in 2014. Unnamed titles represent a diverse list of voices—ones that challenge conventional perspectives while appealing to a broad general audience: exciting, radical, urgent. The company nurtures emerging talent and partner with more established authors to help their platform grow, and its books have been widely praised and featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NPR, NBC, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Miami Herald, Chicago Review of Books, Playboy, Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other outlets. Unnamed authors include Man Booker, Granta Best American Novelist, Philip K. Dick, and Pulitzer Prize award winners, and have been finalists for many other book prizes. You can find out more about the press in articles at the Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and Poets & Writers, among other places.
RARE BIRD
Rare Bird is a Los Angeles–based publishing company founded in 2010 by Tyson Cornell, former Marketing and Publicity Director of Book Soup, a legendary independent bookstore on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. Rare Bird publishes fifty books and records a year with hundreds of authors, including Jack Kerouac, William T. Vollmann, Francesca Lia Block, Bella Thorne, Keith Buckley, Ashley Blue, Jerry Stahl, Record Store Day, Jerry A, Abigail Tartellin, Chip Jacobs, Frank Capra, and J. G. Ballard, among many others. Rare Bird also releases vinyl audiobooks, as well as singles, EPs, compilations, and full-length records with music artists, including Mark Lanegan, Scout larue Willis, Nikki Sixx, Frank Bello, Blag Dahlia, Speedbuggy, Andy Biersack, and more.
Q: I'm an author. Will you stock my book?
A: We have limited shelf space, so new title submissions must be considered before we can add them to our shelves. To submit a stock request, please email us at info@northfigbookshop.com
Q: I couldn't find the book I wanted. Can you order it for me?
A: You can special order books via our Bookshop.org storefront (www.bookshop.org/shop/northfigbookshop)If you'd like to suggest a title for us to stock on our shelves, please email us at info@northfigbookshop.com.
Q: I'm an independent publisher. How can I be involved with North Fig Bookshop?
A: We'd love to work with you! Please email us at info@northfigbookshop.com to set up a time to talk.
Q: Are you hiring?
A: Not at this time. We are a very small team and openings are rare. Feel free to send us a resume at info@northfigbookshop.com and we will keep it on file for when we’re ready to start the process.
