I enjoyed attending the Sydney Anarchist Bookfair last weekend. It wasn’t quite Crassmas, but I did pick up a few things: a book — Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism by Michael Schmidt (AK Press, 2013: reviewed by Gabriel Kuhn here) — several zines — including two issues of Communicating Vessels (a lovely and handsome zine from the US); Sedition (a joint publication of Jura Books and the Melbourne Anarchist Club); Storming the Bastille: Words From Inside The Greek Prisons (Negative Press, 2014) and #4 of the Refugee Art Project Zine — and managed to meet and chat with a range of interesting characters along the way.
Many thanks to friends and comrades for their kind hospitality.
See also : Take Care’s take on the Bookfair: My weekend at the Sydney Anarchist Book Fair and Canberra Zine Emporium, with bonus swipes at Sydney’s public transport system; an interview on 2SER with bookfair organiser Jeremy K and; Rant: What is an anarchist bookfair? (C!ao magazine).
Note: The fourth annual Melbourne Anarchist Bookfair is scheduled to take place in August.
Alpine Anarchist Productions
I’ve been meaning to promote AAP for some time now. Their website has a lot of really interesting material on anarchism. In news just to hand (March 2014): “We are proud to offer yet another updated edition of the popular “Varieties of Islamic Anarchism: A Brief Introduction” pamphlet, put together by our dear friend Anthony T. Fiscella. There is a PDF available for online reading as well as a ready-to-print version in order to make your own zine.”
I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism by Michael Schmidt for a while, but I thought I would wait until vol 2. of Black Flame came out, which would be a more substantial and definitive history of the movement – however, it looks like it’s not going to be released until 2015! Do you have any initial thoughts about the book? Also, here’s a short documentary about Indonesian punks. It’s so cool not to share it would be criminal.