The American Booksellers Association announced this morning that LeVar Burton is the organization’s Indie Bookstore Ambassador for 2025-2026. As ambassador, Burton will champion indie bookstores, especially on Small Business Saturday (Nov. 29, 2025) and Independent Bookstore Day (Apr. 25, 2026).
The ABA stated in a release that Burton “has dedicated decades to encouraging children to read,” including with his debut documentary The Right to Read, which premiered in 2023 and “positions the literacy crisis in America as a civil rights issue.” He is the author of a speculative fiction novel, Aftermath (Aspect, 1997), as well as the children's books The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm (illustrated by Courtenay Fletcher, Reading Rainbow, 2014) and A Kid’s Book About Imagination (DK, 2023).
In 2021, Burton was named the inaugural PEN/Faulkner literary champion by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for his "literary advocacy and a commitment to inspiring new generations of readers and writers."
Burton also is an actor, director, and podcaster. He launched his acting career playing Kunte Kinte in the 1977 television miniseries Roots and played Geordie La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also served as host for the PBS educational series Reading Rainbow from1983 to 2006. Burton hosted the podcast LeVar Reads from 2017 to 2024; its 175 episodes have been downloaded 25 million times.
He has received seven NAACP Awards, a Grammy, a Peabody, and 15 Emmy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award.
In accepting ABA’s invitation to be this year’s Bookstore Ambassador, Burton noted that from his earliest memories, “books carried me beyond the world I knew. They let me explore distant planets, ancient kingdoms, and lives very different from my own. Independent bookstores are where those explorations began. They are sanctuaries of possibility where a single story can change a life.”
Burton is the ABA’s fourth Indie Bookstore Ambassador, succeeding Celeste Ng (2022-2023), Amanda Gorman (2023-2024), and Trevor Noah (2024-2025).
