Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (September 16, 1874 — November 21, 1922) was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. He was born on Mexican Independence Day, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca. He died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, USA…. He was one of the major thinkers of the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican revolutionary movement in the Partido Liberal Mexicano. Flores Magón organised with the Wobblies (IWW) and edited the Mexican anarchist newspaper Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.

Magón is most famous as an activist and revolutionary, but he also wrote a very short story, The Soldier (online at the Kate Sharpley Library).

Ba Jin (1904–2005) is considered one of the most important figures in Chinese literary history. He was introduced to anarchism at the age of 15 by Kropotkin’s writing and he translated many anarchist works into Chinese for publication by a Shanghai newspaper. He worked on behalf of the struggle to free Sacco & Vanzetti and corresponded with Vanzetti until the Bostonian was executed. His most famous novel, Family, is a work critiquing the Chinese feudal system and promotes the concept of youth in revolt. In the 1950s, perhaps due to fear of persecution, he disavowed the anarchism of his youth, and even went to far as to purge his own works of their anarchistic content. Regardless, he was branded as a counter-revolutionary by the Cultural Revolution and was prevented from writing for years. When the Cultural Revolution passed, he rose in party favor and found himself Chairperson of the Chinese Writer’s Association. In later writings, he alluded to possible resentment of his abandonment of anarchism.

Wikipedia:

Ba Jin

Fiction in English available from Amazon.com

• Family
• Cold nights
• Selected works of Ba Jin
• Ward Four

Derrick Jensen (1960–) is a radical environmentalist and author and is considered one of the most influential anti-civilization thinkers. He is more famous for his non-fiction works such as A Culture of Make-Believe and Endgame, but he has also written a couple of novels, a graphic novel, and a book about teaching creative writing—a subject which he has taught in both prison and college.

Author’s site:

derrickjensen.org

Wikipedia:

Derrick Jensen

Available directly from Derrick Jensen:

Both the novel Songs of the Dead and the graphic novel As the World Burns are available directly from Derrick Jensen’s site.

Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923), a Czech whose satirical anti-war novel The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War has been translated into more than 60 languages, was a notorious anarchist and political organizer in Prague. He spent a month in jail for assaulting an officer and he published an anarchist newspaper. In his later life, he shied away from his anarchist leanings and was a member of the Bolshevik Party. At one point, while employed by The Animal Journal, he was fired for writing about imaginary animals as though they were real.

Wikipedia:

Jaroslav Hašek

Novel available from Amazon.com:

• The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War

M. John Harrison (1945–), author of the anarchist The Centauri Device among many other novels, said the following in an interview with Andy Darlington (S.F. Spectrum No.8, 1985):

We must accept—given that [all viewpoints come down to subjectivity]—that we must operate personally. I mean, that’s why I’m still an anarchist. If all value-judgements are subjective which they are by definition, linguistically and in the real world, then any evaluation we make of the universe is personal. It therefore behooves us to act with dignity, and act personally. Not to club together in big groups and say “because we have agreed on this personal evaluation as universal, from now on it will be universal, and we will hit anybody who doesn’t agree with us!”

Author’s site:

mjohnharrison.com

Author’s blog:

Ambient Hotel

Wikipedia:

M. John Harrison

Fiction available from Amazon.com:

• The Committed Men
• Viriconium Trilogy
• The Centauri Device
• Ice Monkey and Other Stories
• Climbers
• The Wild Road
• The Golden Cat
• The Knot Garden
• Nonesuch
• Light
• Things That Never Happen
• Anima
• Nova Swing

Jimmy T. Hand (1984–) is an anarchist adventurer (to use his words) and writer. He’s written two autobiographical novellas, In the Hall of the Mountain King and The Road to Either Or. He ran away from home, never finished high school, and never regretted either. He’s been a part of anti-globalization, anti-war, and anti- logging activism, and has a tendency to travel.

Works available online:

The Seduction of the Wind and The World Below & Here Comes the Fucking Circus are available online for download from Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. “Funny Thing About Horizons” available in issue #5 of SteamPunk Magazine.

Paul Goodman (1911–1972), was a lot of things to a lot of different people. To the psychotherapy world, he is known as one of the co-founders of Gestalt theory. To the literary world, he was a novelist. Perhaps his most famous novel is The Empire City, a story that follows a ’50s rebel in New York City. But he’s also well known as the author of Growing Up Absurd, and his works were hugely influential on the ’60s student radical movement, a movement he later criticized as sometimes both too dogmatic and too fickle.

Wikipedia:

Paul Goodman

Fiction available through Amazon.com:

• Grand Piano Or the Almanac of Alienation
• The State of Nature
• The Copernican Revolution
• The Break-Up of Our Camp and Other Stories
• The Dead of Spring
• Parents’ Day
• The Empire City: A Novel of New York City
• Making do
• Adam & His Works
• A Ceremonial
• The Facts of Life
• Don Juan: Or, the Continuum of the Libido
• The Galley to Mytilene

Non-fiction works available for online reading:

From the Preservation Institute

William Godwin (1756–1836), considered by some “the first anarchist,” did indeed lay down an impressive amount of anti-state theory, in part in his remarkably titled Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. He also, however, wrote what is considered the first mystery novel: Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams. He was married to Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first feminists, and fathered Mary Shelley, one of the first science-fiction authors. He was libeled and persecuted heavily for his political be-liefs and spent much of his life living as anonymously as possible.

Wikipedia:

William Godwin

Fiction available from Amazon.com:

• Caleb Williams
• St. Leon
• Fleetwood
• Damon and Delia
• Cloudesley

Fiction available to read on Google Books:

• Caleb Williams
• Mandeville
• St. Leon
• Fleetwood
• Cloudesley

Fiction available to download from Project Gutenberg:

• Caleb Williams
• Damon and Delia
• Imogen

Fly (n.d.), a comic author, has been squatting in New York City for over two decades. Her stories are beautifully honest and strange, fictionalizing elements of her life on the streets and in squats and traveling the world. Her work has been collected into the books CHRON!IC!RIOTS!PA!SM! and Total Disaster, as well as the graphic novel Dog Dayz. Her comic “Zero Content” appeared in Slug & Lettuce for years, and she’s done the covers of countless books, zines, and records.

Author’s website:

flyspage.com

Book available from AK Press:

• CHRON!IC!RIOTS!PA!SM!

Leslie Fish (n.d.), an accomplished folk singer and one of the creators of the “Filk” tradition (science-fiction/fantasy themed music), is also an author, anarchist, and Wobbly. She once wrote a guide to surviving the apocalypse in the form of an album, Firestorm, in which she relayed information about making antibiotics, gunpowder, and lenses. She also practices that renown form of plagiarism, fan-fiction, having fan-published a novel taking place in the Star Trek universe. She took part in writing a collaborative fantasy trilogy, The Sword of Knowledge, of which she authored the first book, A Dirge for Sabis.

Author’s website:

lesliefish.com

Novel available from Amazon.com:

• Dirge for Sabis

Video of song explaining why to aim carefully rather than turning your gun on full-auto:

Wikipedia:

Leslie Fish