Meet the Team

Joe Walters founded Independent Book Review in 2018. During his time as the marketing and publicity director at a small press in Oregon, he discovered how difficult it was for small press and self-published books to get the attention they deserved. So he hopped on the internet, came up with a name, got confused for a million straight hours, and made Independent Book Review happen. He is the author of The Truth About Book Reviews. Listen to him on recent episodes of The Creative Penn, Novel Marketing, Get Your Book Seen and Sold, and more.

Currently reading: House of Frank by Kay Sinclair

Jaylynn Korrell has been writing reviews and blog posts for IBR since the beginning. She takes the photographs and manages the IBR Instagram page. She reads all genres but is drawn most to impressive books with strong female leads and stories that restore her hope in the future. In her spare time, she likes to play board games, hang with her children, and take road trips around America.

Samantha Hui’s work has appeared in The Tunnels, Thin Air, Maudlin House, and Canyon Voices. Having earned her English B.A. from Northern Arizona University, she is currently pursuing her English M.A. at Arizona State University. She lives in Mesa, AZ with her partner, their two boys, and their cat and dog. In her free time, you can find her trying new foods, watching horror movies, or chasing a rare quiet moment with a book. Her genre of choice is usually poetry or gothic horror.

Joelene has an absolute glut of hobbies: sculpting, painting, drawing, writing, hiking, and swimming to name a few. One that has always stayed with her is reading. She’s spent most of her career in bookstores, and every one of her favorite customers has opened up her literary world a little more. Now she finds herself devouring anything from architecture to romantasy. Terry Pratchett and Holly Black, however, will always be her comfort reads.

Andrea is a South African freelance writer whose life outside of books is filled with Formula 1, soccer, and crochet projects. From emoji-reacting on her Kindle to having fun pairing books with her favorite TV shows, getting to write for IBR is a dream job. Stories focusing on the joy of queerness, disability, and people of color are everything to her. She enjoys nonfiction that educates her about everyday magic; she cares deeply about anticapitalist speculative fiction; and she’s an all-day-every-day queer romance reader.

Current cozy crime correspondent for Crime Fiction Lover and former editor of NB Magazine, my reviews and articles have also appeared in Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Book Review, Split Lip, and The Coil, among others. When not reviewing books, I’m a freelance editor and proofreader. I primarily review crime and mystery fiction—particularly Golden Age, cozy, and classic Japanese crime fiction—but I also enjoy literary fiction, thriller, history, biography, sci fi, and historical fiction.