About Us

Geri

Founder | Owner | Jack-of-all-Trades | Daughter

For as long as I can remember, I have been telling stories through words and images. I wrote, illustrated, and self-published my first graphic novel in high school. After studying Japanese language, literature, and culture for many years, I spent a year abroad in Tokyo, Japan at Sophia University. I am a graduate of New York University: Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where I created my own major: a cross-cultural study of storytelling within film, literature, graphic novels, etc. In all my endeavors, I adapt this interdisciplinary approach, pursuing my diverse interests with in-depth research and imagination.

I conceived Open Book Chocolates because I wanted to create a small business that combined my love of classic literature with really unique craft chocolate. In 2017,  I ran and successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign in order to produce our first Open Book Chocolates flavors. Since then, we’ve run four subsequent Kickstarter campaigns to help us add flavors to our collection. And we’re planning another  that will launch in September 2024!

I'm a jack-of-all trades — creating the flavors and recipes for our chocolate bars, designing all the packaging and sending it off to our printer, running our online store and social media accounts, selling our products at in-person events in Maryland and Virginia, handling wholesale orders from independent bookstores and gift shops across the country, etc.

In addition to Open Book Chocolates, I’m a published graphic novelist best known for The Poet and the Flea (about the poet-painter William Blake) and The Plague and Doctor Caim (about a 17th-century plague doctor).