Every month, Librairie Drawn & Quarterly invites an author or artist to curate a shelf in the store. This month, we bring you recommendations from DESMOND COLE! 

DESMOND COLE is an award-winning journalist, radio host, and activist in Toronto. His writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, Toronto Life, The Walrus, NOW Magazine, Ethnic Aisle, Torontoist, BuzzFeed, and the Ottawa Citizen. He hosts a weekly radio program every Sunday on Newstalk 1010.

We are elated to be hosting Cole for the Montreal launch of The Skin We're In on February 12th at La Petite D+Q!

We'll be offering a 15% discount on all of Desmod's picks throughout the month. Here's a sneak peak:

 Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada

This collection of essays by several co-founders of Black Lives Matter Toronto, as well as activists and writers across the country, is essential to understanding the struggle for Black liberation in Canada.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott

Elliott's work here is an honest, thoughtful, and often very personal reflection of a Tuscarora woman resisting colonialism, reflecting on family and ancestry, and navigating the Canadian literary landscape. 

BlackLife by Idil Abdillahi and Rinaldo Walcott

Abdillahi and Walcott remind us of the cultural gifts Black artists gave Canada in the 1990s, the frustration at this work being forsaken or forgotten, and the need to dream of a world where more of us take risks for Black life.

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King

Even as he teaches us about the challenging and often grim histories of white settler interactions with North America's Indigenous peoples, King is playful, poetic and always accessible. 

This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Simpson's poetry is meditative, her prose self-effacing and very funny, and her preservation of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg language and culture is a gift to all her readers.