Get ready for another incredible bookfair! We’ve got a fantastic schedule in store for you. Times and locations are subject to change so grab a printed program from the welcome table when you arrive.
This year’s keynote will be a panel discussion on mutual aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Helen, taking place at Sly Grog on Saturday night at 6:30pm. Full details TBA!
Friday, September 26th
5:00pm-6:30pm
Firestorm Books
Be Gay Do Crimes with Blu Buchanan
8:00pm-10:00pm
27 Balm Grove
Breaking the Spell: The Game with eros plus riot
Saturday, September 27th
10:30am-12:00pm
27 Balm Grove
Ashes to Empires: Burn the System, End Rape Culture
27 Balm Grove Basement
Introduction to Radio Communication
Haywood Famous
Tortillas, Collards and Almond Moms
1:00pm-2:00pm
27 Balm Grove Basement
Teach-in on NC Indigenous Resistance with Tico
Haywood Famous
From Disaster to Resistance: What Catastrophes Can Teach Us About
Building Our Power In the Face of Authoritarianism
2:30pm-4:00pm
27 Balm Grove Basement
Cross-Crisis Solidarity: Disaster Scenario Planning for Climate Collapse in Carceral Spaces with Fight Toxic Prisons and the Asheville Community Bail Fund
12 Baskets
A Conversation about Community-Led Home Funerals with Woven Ends
Haywood Famous
When Those Who Are Resisting Have Names and Addresses
4:30pm-5:30pm
27 Balm Grove Basement
Conjure That!: Appalachian Folkways and their Radical Meaning
12 Baskets
Anti-Repression with Fire Ant Movement Defense
Haywood Famous
Get In The Van: Steering Liberals into Radical Lanes with The Autonomous Body Shop
8:00pm-10:00pm
Haywood Famous
Fine Wine: A Salon on Aging in the Anarchist World
Sunday, September 28th
Self-organized sessions and activities will take place at Balm Grove from 10:30am to 5pm! Got something you want to share? Add it to the session board at the welcome table!
10:30am-12:00pm
27 Balm Grove
Women’s Autonomous Organization and Experiences from the Rojava Revolution
27 Balm Grove Basement
Becoming Post-BIPOCalyptic
Haywood Famous
Evolution of a Community Bail Fund with AVLCBF
1:00pm-2:00pm
27 Balm Grove Basement
Importing Carceral Technology. How the Prison System in Appalachia Benefits from Occupation in Palestine
Haywood Famous
Power, Pleasure, and the Politics of Control with Azrael
Session Descriptions
Ashes to Empires: Burn the System, End Rape Culture
Rape culture isn’t a side issue – it’s the backbone of domination. To dismantle it is to strike at the heart of empire, patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonial rule. Ending sexual violence is not just about survival – it’s about strategy, resistance, and building a world where no one is disposable.
Join us for a grounded and open discussion on what it means to end rape culture as part of a broader movement towards total liberation. We’ll explore models for addressing harm without replicating careers violence, the liberation of land and body as interconnected struggles, and how we move beyond a politics of safety towards a politic of taking care of each other, fighting back, and refusing to sacrifice ourselves or each other to the system.
This is how empires fall.
Be Gay Do Crime Book Launch
Come help us kick off the 2025 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair with Blu Buchanan, local UNCA professor and co-editor of Be Gay, Do Crime. Blu will provide a short talk about the history of radical queer resistance and what it means for us in this particular historical moment. There will be time for book signing, conversation, and food!
As communities are boldly rising to challenge capitalism, white supremacy, and authoritarianism, Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion is your ultimate guide to LGBTQ+ resilience and rebellion. Packed with daily snapshots of radical queer history, this book celebrates the bold, the brave, and the beautifully defiant moments that have shaped the fight for justice.
Becoming Post-BIPOCalyptic
A panel and collective discussion on moving past BIPOC radicalism and its attachment to racial identity, the politics of safety & sacrifice, and negative cycles of victimhood, shame, & critique. Aiming to reground in an insurrectionary politics oriented towards power, strategy, and desire, this workshop challenges us to leave behind the suffocating comforts of “who we are” to embrace the exhilarating potentials of what we could become, beyond the captivity of race and identity
Breaking the Spell: the Game
A street game with an analysis. A memory of the Seattle 1999 WTO protests. A kinetic experience of direct action. This outdoor theatrical game offers a lived encounter with the bravery, joy, and challenge of street action to help invigorate us in the struggles of the present. Players will watch a selection from the 1999 archival film Breaking the Spell to situate them in the world of the Battle of Seattle. Then the game will begin. Players will choose roles like marcher and blockader, then work together to shut down the WTO Conference, using protest tactics like locking on, barricading, de-arresting, smashing, looting, and more.
A Conversation about Community-Led Home Funerals
Have you ever wondered about the possibilities and legalities around home funerals? Do you feel drawn to reconnect with old knowledge and practices of caring for our own dead? Most people don’t know that it is perfectly legal to practice community-led home funerals anywhere within the US, with only some jurisdictions requiring a licensed funeral director to perform specific tasks. We believe this lack of knowledge is intentional. To remove us of our ability to sit with death, to prepare and care for the bodies of our beloveds, to grieve about them and over them, together, is a significant way to keep us frozen in unprocessed grief. With the advent of outsourcing the preparation and storage of our dead came a severance in our ability to mourn. We mean no disrespect to the help that some funeral directors can offer, which can be invaluable during a time of monumental distress. We also know that the powers that be aim to destroy our collective knowledge and power; that they would love nothing more to keep us dependent, listless, disempowered and confused. Disconnecting us from our own desire or ability to care for our dead is but one of many ways to keep us in this dysfunctional state.
This workshop/panel/whatever hopes to be an intimate conversation about home funerals and all things that are possible. We welcome those who have experience caring for their dead, as well as those who are uncomfortable at the mere thought of this, and everyone in between.
Conjure That!: Appalachian Folkways and their Radical Meaning
Appalachian folkways sit at a complicated crossroads, that represents both a radical but simultaneously reactionary history and tradition. The folk practices of the various regions in the mountains are representative of communal interdependence and living outside of an oppressive state. But also, contains the histories of colonialism and white supremacy, albeit resistance to both is a part of the same history. This presentation will not teach people how to practice or connect to Appalachian folk practices, but will explain both the complexities and real life anarchist folk practices of the mountains.
Cross-Crisis Solidarity: Disaster Scenario Planning for Climate Collapse in Carceral Spaces
This workshop, co-facilitated between FTP’s Hurricane & Disaster Response Team and ACBF, provides a framework and local context for disaster scenario planning, threat monitoring, and evacuation advocacy around jails, prisons, and detention centers. Part discussion of ACBF’s response to hurricane Helene, part collaborative workshop utilizing FTP’s disaster planning approach, this session focuses on the specific needs of Asheville’s incarcerated community amidst intensifying climate collapse. Participants will explore existing tools as well as detangle the bureaucratic web of agencies controlling various carceral facilities. Using a combination of local experience with Helene and strategies which FTP has found effective in responding to other disasters across the south, participants will create their own inside-outside disaster-preparedness plan, and discuss the ways in which the Asheville community can strengthen solidarity with comrades inside ahead of the next climate catastrophe.
Evolution of a Community Bail Fund
This talk will describe the evolution of the Asheville Community Bail Fund over 4 years, highlighting ways this grassroots abolitionist project has responded and adapted to wider political contexts and local events, from liberal mass demobilization during the Biden administration to Hurricane Helene response. Collective members will reflect on lessons learned and share individual and collective analysis of our past and current work, ending with an exploration of the opportunities for future strategic intervention informed by our shared values and contemporary political moment.
Fine Wine: A Salon on Aging in the Anarchist World
ACAB 2023 debuted the exclusive tradition of gathering 35 and up anarchists to talk about what it means to get older in the Neverland of Anarchy. Last summer we lit a spark with SOFTCORE: Singles Over Forty Tonight / Crushing on Random Elders– an experiment in speed dating. In keeping with tradition, this year the soon to be elders bring you ~FINE WINE~ a salon on aging in the anarchist world. Bring a sophisticated treat, a prompt or piece of provocative media to spark lively discussion on what it means to get older in the end times. We will facilitate discussion based on curated prompts and ones that emerge.
From Disaster to Resistance: What Catastrophes Can Teach Us About
Many folks in WNC involved in mutual aid networks in the wake of Hurricane Helene felt that coming out of the disaster they were more networked and better prepared to fight back against the rise in authoritarianism ushered in by Trump’s return. Similar sentiments have been expressed by residents of L.A.; that the intense mutual aid organizing in response to last winter’s wildfires put them on a much stronger footing to fight back against the military occupation of their city. In this workshop we’ll look at how lessons learned from organizing for our collective survival in the days and weeks after Hurricane Helene can be applied to strengthen our hand and nurture communities of resistance to authoritarianism. We’ll explore what opportunities present themselves in disasters, whether its floods or the dismantling of the social safety net, to grow our collective power while chipping away at the state’s chokehold on our communities.
Get In The Van: Steering Liberals into Radical Lanes
Liberals love abortion, voting, & the rule of law. They also apparently love 30 year old Astrovans and the anarchists that drive them. Huh, how, why? Great questions that we will cover in this workshop about radicalizing liberals.
Using The Auto(nomous) Body Shop in Pittsburgh as a starting point and example, we’ll highlight ways to entice, invite, & engage liberals without watering down our values, words, or our commitment to liberation for all. Topics we’ll cover:
– expanding the white woman’s gaze (& wallets) beyond abortion
– sneaking in & solidifying ACAB sentiments with a winning smile
– using social capital to support anti-capitalist causes
– turning personal experiences with the State into broader perspectives against it
and more…
We aim for our workshop to be both fun and functional! There will be time & space to discuss, share examples, and brainstorm opportunities unique to attendees locales.
Importing Carceral Technology. How the Prison System in Appalachia Benefits from Occupation in Palestine
Abolitionists/anti-Zionists are asked about solutions in bad faith, while being offered the options “2 state solution” & “prison reform” These options maintain the underlying power dynamics & inherent violence of these systems
We are rejecting non-solutions that don’t fundamentally challenge the domination our current reality is built upon, & instead daring to imagine an alt future.
The session will explore:
– The shared basis that enables occupation/genocide in Palestine/world and its use as testing ground for war industry/how that supports the violence of the US carceral state, and boomerangs back to and on US borders
– How this racialized domination is used for accumulating capital, putting us all in a transnational struggle against one enemy
– The connection between missiles, AI for war, our own eco disaster in WNC, & how victims of the prison system are left behind
Then breakout groups will imagine what the future can/must look like & engage with the ideas of solutions/alternatives
Introduction to Radio Communication
The goal of this presentation is to cover: 1) The fundamentals of how radio communication works. 2) The possibilities that radio communication offers (and doesn’t offer) our communities. 3) How people can learn more if there are specific uses they are interested in.
Power, Pleasure, and the Politics of Control
What does it actually mean to kill the cop and colonizer inside of our heads? Does extending care to the enemy neutralize your politics? What does it take to weave new realities as we unravel our current one?
This conversation between radical, southern trans healers, sex workers, and organizers toys with a fresh understanding of the differences between “power” and “control” that complicates, agitates, and intertwines with our understandings of pleasure and liberation under this SCHIT (systemic cishetero intersectional terror).
Come for hot takes, transsexual rage, lessons from the front lines of whoreganizing and survivors of multi-“natural” disasters, BDSM, Theory™️, [redacted], and cum. Come for the cum. Stay for the free bumper stickers.
Teach-in on NC Indigenous Resistance
This teach-in will cover highlights in Indigenous resistance since colonization in the territory currently known as North Carolina. this is not meant to be a comprehensive history but a snapshot of various impactful moments on history that exemplify anti-colonial struggle + can offer some insights for current struggles!
Tortillas, Collards and Almond Moms
Your fridge, your eating disorder, the location of the grocery stores around you and the place you get your veggies from do not exist in a non-political vacuum. Tortillas, Collards and Almond Moms will be an opportunity to learn about, discuss and personally reflect on the intersection of diet culture with capitalism, anti-blackness, food apartheid, climate justice, and the importance of culturally relevant food.
When Those Who Are Resisting Have Names and Addresses
How do public-facing, autonomous projects operate in a period of escalating repression? How can individuals, many of whom are part of marginalized or vilified communities, maintain movement infrastructure while balancing the tension between a combative political position and collective safety?
In this panel discussion, participants in regional spaces—including an immigrant mutual aid distro, an autonomous social center, and an anarchist bookstore—will reflect on the challenges they face from the State and far Right. They’ll reflect on the limitations of legibility, our collective vulnerability to surveillance, organizational approaches to security, the importance of community defense, and why it might still be worth it for some of us to post our addresses on the internet!
Women’s Autonomous Organization and Experiences from the Rojava Revolution
Two internationalist women comrades discuss their experiences from different parts of the Rojava Revolution: one worked in Women’s Justice under the Autonomous Administration as well as the woman’s science Jineoloji, and the other worked within the ranks of women’s defense forces YPJ for several years.
How and why is women’s autonomy practiced, and what impact does it have on the revolutionary struggle? What is internationalism? Join us for a discussion of these questions and more.