Step into the Aurega Reid Free Library, a sanctuary of knowledge, curiosity, and courageous conversation.

 

Created in memory of Aurega “Ari” Reid, this free library exists to protect the freedom to read and to ensure that stories, identities, and ideas are never erased simply because they make people uncomfortable.

 

Ari was extraordinary. She was fiercely intelligent, endlessly curious, and deeply compassionate. By the age of nineteen, she had taught herself Latin, spoke fluent Spanish, and was studying Arabic and Aramaic out of a profound love for language, ancient history, and human connection. She was a voracious reader who believed knowledge should never be hidden away behind fear or ideology.

 

In 2024, Ari died suddenly, leaving behind a grief too large for words. In the middle of that grief, her parents, Molly and her husband, searched for a way to carry her brilliance forward. What emerged was not simply a memorial, but a living continuation of who Ari was and what she believed in.

 

As a transgender young woman, Ari understood what it meant to see marginalized voices pushed aside or silenced. She was deeply troubled by growing efforts to ban and remove books from libraries and schools. She believed people did not have to agree with every story or perspective, but they should always have the right to access them. “Maybe you need to know what you don’t agree with,” she once said during a passionate late-night conversation about book bans.

 

The Aurega Reid Free Library was built from that conviction.

 

Here, readers will find banned, challenged, and frequently removed books alongside works that celebrate marginalized communities, diverse histories, and radical imagination. This library is a safe space for exploration, reflection, and learning. It is a place where hidden narratives are brought back into the light and where every person is invited to think critically, read freely, and ask bigger questions.

 

More than shelves and pages, this library is Ari’s legacy alive in the world: bold, brilliant, compassionate, and unafraid.

 

Through community events, shared dialogue, and a carefully curated collection, the Aurega Reid Free Library honors the enduring power of words and the people who fight to protect them.

 

Join us in celebrating the freedom to read, the freedom to learn, and the freedom to exist fully and openly in one’s own story.