J. Alan Kahn was named president of the Barnes & Noble Publishing Group in February 2002. From 1997 he was chief operating officer of Barnes & Noble Inc. A veteran of the bookselling and publishing industries for over thirty years Mr. Kahn began his career on the West Coast in a senior merchandising position at the highly regarded Pickwick Bookshops one of the first large store chains of bookstores in the United States.

In 1971 Mr. Kahn joined B. Dalton Booksellers Inc. the then Dayton Hudson-owned bookstore chain as vice president of merchandising and was a member of the management team that built B. Dalton into the most widely respected dominant force in bookselling in the 1970s. He also served as president of Marboro Books and editor-in-chief of the trade division of Harcourt Brace Publishers.

Mr. Kahn joined Barnes & Noble Inc. in 1978 as executive vice president and in 1988 was named president and chief operating officer of Barnes & Noble College Bookstores Inc. He was promoted to chief executive officer in 1995. Barnes & Noble College Bookstores is the premier operator of college bookstores in the U.S. with stores at more than 500 college and university campuses throughout the country including Yale Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Kahn lives with his wife and son in Manhattan.