Five months after Dionne Sims announced that Black Garnet Books, the first Black woman–owned brick-and-mortar bookstore in Minnesota, was for sale, the St. Paul indie has changed hands from Sims to Terresa Moses, an associate professor of graphic design and the director of design justice at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus. Moses is also the owner of Blackbird Revolt, a graphic design company that promotes social change.
Moses describes herself as a “proud Black queer woman,” and says she uses creativity as a tool in her social justice advocacy and community organizing efforts. She received her Ph.D in philosophy with a concentration in social justice education from the University of Toronto in October, and has lived in Minnesota for eight years; she moved from Texas to Minnesota in 2016 to teach at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and left there for the Twin Cities in 2020.
Sims quit her corporate job in July 2020 to launch Black Garnet, two months after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. Black Garnet initially was a pop-up to sell books by BIPOC authors but switched to a brick-and-mortar model two years ago, when Sims received a $100,000 matching grant from the City of St. Paul after she’d raised $113,900 through a GoFundMe campaign. While it has expanded its inventory since opening its storefront, its focus remains on BIPOC authors.
Sims announced in June of this year that she had decided to sell the store and return to school to earn an MFA. “I’ve always loved to write, both personally and professionally,” she explained on social media. “I do it every day and I want to go back to school to take my craft to another place—a braver place—than I could do on my own.” Sims added that she is selling the store because, she wrote, “I refuse to half-ass running Black Garnet or half-ass my schooling.”
This story has been updated with further information.
