Description

Since it began two decades ago, the New York City Anarchist Book Fair has become a vital resource for North American anarchists: a place to gather and organize; to share ideas, art, and insurgency; and to introduce our movement to the anarcho-curious. In the next chapter of Incendiary Thoughts, which continues through the collaboration of AK Press, we bring together a collection of interviews that shares a collective history of the second decade of the New York City Anarchist Book Fair as well as articulations of our values and our philosophies. Our intention is also to share how simple it is to organize our book fair so that we encourage people from other communities and places to establish their own book fairs that respond to their own needs and conditions.

With contributions from members of the collective as well as speakers, artists, and organizers from past book fairs, “Incendiary Thoughts” chronicles the evolution of the NYC Anarchist Book Fair itself as well as the various cultural and healing elements that have grown alongside it, AnarkoArtLab, The Emma Goldman Film Festival, The John Cage Music Festival, Healing House, and the NYCABF Comedy Festival. Conducted in spring 2026, these interviews feature voices from many different elements of the book fair, from past and present collective members to tablers, publishers, artists, distros, organizers, participants, antifa, and others. These contributions are much more than a linear history of the book fair, they explore what has manifested through the book fair and offer reflections from a range of perspectives. Together, in “an accumulation of differences” per Ben Morea, they explore the role of the book fair in creating a momentary commons, an anarchist infrastructure of exchange, mutual aid, international solidarity, healing, and form an articulation of a world without hierarchy.