For this instalment of our 5 questions with blog series, we interviewed Hilary Atleo from Iron Dog Books, an Indigenous-owned bookshop and booktruck dedicated to bringing low cost reading to Səl̓ilwətaɁɬ, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories (metro Vancouver).
A booktruck, you ask? Yes, you read that correctly. The 80 square foot van goes wherever readers are, providing an easy, exciting, and new way to purchase books. During non-COVID-19 times, the mobile bookshop can be found at events like festivals and markets.
Owners Hilary and Cliff firmly believe that books should be affordable and accessible. Part of their inventory includes new, used, and remaindered books as well as book related merchandise. Iron Dog Books’ brick and mortar location opened in December 2019 after years of successfully selling books in the booktruck and it’s now their base of operations.
1. Which author would you most like to have for an event in your store (living or dead)?
We would love to have NK Jemisin visit our shop! Cliff (my husband and co-owner of Iron Dog Books) and I read a lot of feminist science fiction and fantasy, and Jemisin's books are major favourites. My inner child wishes Terry Pratchett were still alive so I could meet him, he seemed like an excellent person and his books were so important to me growing up.
2. What attracted you to bookselling?
I like hard work and I don't care about being wealthy. One day I looked at the career options in an office and I said ‘I need to make my work life more like my time away from work' and what I like to do for fun is go to bookshops and drink coffee. Now I spend almost every day in a bookshop drinking coffee and it’s the best life in the world.
3. What's your favourite bookselling war story?
That time I started a bookshop in a truck, and had to figure it all out! Running the truck without a supporting bookshop was the most intense, hard work, deep dive education about the industry and running a small business. I had seven years of combined experience at two other bookshops and I still floundered and made tons of mistakes.
4. What is the most pressing issue facing bookselling today?
Government policy that creates a hostile environment for new entrepreneurs. Booksellers are essential to the creative economy of Canada and yet the municipal, provincial, and federal governments have cultural policies that encourage the writing and publishing of books but not the selling of them. If we want our literary community to thrive in Canada we need to make it possible for young people to start in the bookselling industry and actually make a living; that means addressing runaway commercial leases for small independents and properly taxing and regulating online retailers and their labour practices.
5. What forthcoming book are you most excited about?
The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley. It’s the debut novel of an Anishinaabe author from Sault Ste. Marie and it looks incredible!
BONUS: An aunt comes in looking for a gift for her niece, who likes embroidery and Proust, just got a new job on a cruise line, and whose beloved schnauzer just passed away. What do you recommend?
Difficult to say, I suppose I would ask the aunt if the Proust is more important than the schnauzer. If the schnauzer takes precedence, then My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell because it’s heartwarming, travel oriented, and well written. If Proust is more important, then perhaps Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes, which was recommended to me by Kim Koch of the Paper Hound and is excellent. It has nothing to do with Proust, but I suspect anyone who works on a cruise line could use a good book about fighting back against misogyny.
Thanks to Hilary for answering our questionnaire and making great suggestions for the fictitious aunt we created.
Find all of our bookseller responses to this questionnaire here.
In this podcast episode, we talk to Wendy Reid from Rakuten Kobo and the W3C.