This weekend: Left Forum and the First Annual Charlottesville Anarchist Bookfair
As we head into the start of the Spring tabling season, it’s a busy weekend for the AK Baltimore crew! We have not one, but two out of town events this weekend, and many many more in the coming weeks …
As I type this, Suzanne and Jessica are currently packing up piles of books for the annual Left Forum Conference, held at the Pace University campus in New York City (and boasting some of the best graphic design that I’ve ever seen associated with this event – nice job folks!). Left Forum kicks off tonight, and the opening plenary is always great. This year’s opening night event includes Barbara Ehrenreich ( a personal favorite of mine! I just wish I could get her to come out and do an event in Baltimore), Cornel West (need I say more), Lara Flanders (of GRIT TV fame), and Paul Mason (the economics editor at BBC Newsnight). Weird combo, no? But still awesome!
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Over the course of the weekend Left Forum will host over 1,000 speakers on more than 250 panels. Seriously. It’s a huge progressive event, and we’re excited to be a part of it! AK authors holding down the anarchy fort in the middle of this Marxist mecca include Josh MacPhee, Cindy Milstein, David Porter, Ben Dangl, Andy Cornell, Chris Spannos, Marina Sitrin, Fred Ho, and probably many others who will (we hope) stop by the table and say “howdy”! And, Jessica and Suzanne will be there in the exhibition hall and at the panels to provide copies of our author’s books, plus hundreds of other speaker books that AK distributes (including a great selection of new titles from our friends at Feminist Press) and other ephemera.
But, before we get there, Suzanne and Jessica have to get it all packed and loaded into the car, which is a massive task considering that they have to cram enough books to fill out three tables into a Honda FIT.
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Jessica (pictured here) is unthrilled by the fact that publishers (like AK Press!) make their books non-standard sizes, thus making the packing process all the more difficult.
Meanwhile, once they finish packing & loading, I’ll start packing up for my tabling gig this weekend: the First Annual Charlottesville Anarchist Bookfair, down in Charlottesville, VA, just three hours away from Baltimore. I’m excited! I don’t expect it to be a huge event, but I am all about supporting new anarchist bookfairs, especially ones in the mid-Atlantic, so as soon as I heard this event was in the works, I signed up to table. The event is a one-day affair, on Saturday, so I’m heading down tomorrow morning with folks from Red Emma’s, and we’ll be joining some of our pals from Justseeds, Intsitute for Experimental Freedom, Flying Brick Library, Crimethinc, Dream City Collective, and many other folks, outside in the midst of the Virginia Festival of the Book. Should be a blast!
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If you find yourself in New York this weekend, or if you happen to live in Virginia or the surrounding area, come out and visit us! We love tabling visitors, and, as always, we’ll be offering great deals and discount books at both events throughout the weekend.