Egypt Otis — Archivist, Cultural Worker, and Founder of Comma Bookstore & Social Hub

Egypt Otis is an archivist, cultural worker, and community educator specializing in audio preservation, oral histories, and grassroots archiving. She is the founder and owner of Comma Bookstore & Social Hub, the only Black-owned bookstore in Flint, Michigan—an intergenerational space dedicated to BIPOC literature, radical thought, and cultural programming.

Egypt is currently pursuing her Master of Library and Information Science with a graduate certificate in Archival Administration at Wayne State University. She is also a Directors’ Scholarship recipient at Rare Book School, where she studied Audiovisual Archive Management at the University of North Carolina.

Her work centers on preserving obsolete and at-risk audio formats—from vinyl and cassettes to reel-to-reel tapes—and activating Black memory through curated listening experiences, oral history projects, and public workshops. Egypt’s SoundCloud archive (listen below) features curated historical recordings, spoken word, and digitized archival audio from her ongoing preservation projects.

She is available for:
– Speaking engagements on cultural preservation, Black memory work, and audio archiving
– Archival Services/Consulting for individuals, institutions, and grassroots organizations
– Workshops and trainings in oral history collection, digitization, and community archiving practices

Whether teaching, preserving, or storytelling, Egypt brings care, precision, and cultural fluency to every space she enters.