- by Allison Billings

In the winter, I decided to lease an unheated space that was basically glorious old brick and beams, one bald light and no water in the middle of nowhere. (ok, fine…Hepworth).

I had a feeling that I wanted to create a little bookstore in the (also art) studio. I had very much missed bookstores in the pandemic …but I also wanted a different sort. I had almost no money and I had never even worked in a bookstore. But I knew who to ask for help…and my credit card limits were fortuitously raised (now, less fortuitously maxed). I’m incredibly grateful to Rina Barone of Curiosity House Books in Creemore for her help with understanding the business of books.

And for giving great advice that in some ways I ignored, because I had a very specific idea of curation. I wanted to emphasize diversity, I wanted to only centre books that were intrinsically anti-racist, anti-colonial, and as much as possible, anti-established (patriarchy, capitalism, every system that fails us).

I wanted books that celebrated otherness. I wanted books that questioned the ethics of how we live in the anthropocene. I wanted books that quietly yet ferociously aligned with the questions I think we need to ask of ourselves, over and over.

I wanted the mere fact of these kinds of books being championed here, in this rural area of regressive politics, to be a respite, a resource and a gathering point.

I wanted stories that whispered new worlds and sunk their teeth into my ignorance and my pretensions. I wanted books that opened doors and trusted me as a reader to pass through them with open, questioning eyes .

I had to really, conscientiously change my reading habits. What I wasn’t reading, what I wasn’t even aware I wasn’t reading, was truly humbling. If you are a reader and curious about expanding the range and depth of your reading, please give Dandelion and Blackberry a follow.

While d & b is a little bookshop that I would love you to physically visit and support, it will also serve online as a suggested reading list, should you choose to follow up at your own local indie or library.