  We explore the potential of current and future liquid scintillator neutrino
detectors of O (10) kt mass to localize a pre-supernova neutrino signal in the
sky. In the hours preceding the core collapse of a nearby star (at distance D <
1 kpc), tens to hundreds of inverse beta decay events will be recorded, and
their reconstructed topology in the detector can be used to estimate the
direction to the star. Although the directionality of inverse beta decay is
weak (~8% forward-backward asymmetry for currently available liquid
scintillators), we find that for a fiducial signal of 200 events (which is
realistic for Betelgeuse), a positional error of ~60 degrees can be achieved,
resulting in the possibility to narrow the list of potential stellar candidates
to less than ten, typically. For a configuration with improved forward-backward
asymmetry (~40%, as expected for a lithium-loaded liquid scintillator), the
angular sensitivity improves to ~15 degrees, and - when a distance upper limit
is obtained from the overall event rate - it is in principle possible to
uniquely identify the progenitor star. Any localization information
accompanying an early supernova alert will be useful to multi-messenger
observations and to particle physics tests using collapsing stars.
