Hey everyone,

We're baa-aack! And we'd like to start by apologizing for our long absence. Communication is important, and we've left you hanging for a long time.

When we last checked in, we had announced that we were taking a year off to regroup as a collective and rethink the bookfair. Truth is, things were a little more complicated than that. From the outside, the 2023 Montreal Anarchist Bookfair seemed like a huge success. On the inside, our collective imploded.

That implosion involves many twists and turns, but in short, several of us had experienced harmful opinions and behaviors rooted in the logic of white superiority/supremacy as well as a lack of respect for the collective process by certain collective members. This resulted in misunderstandings, yelling matches, backstabbing, hurt feelings, broken friendships, and essentially, emotional and physical burnout. Some collective members did not abide by our collective decisions, shared confidential information beyond the collective, and spread misinformation that unnecessarily created bad feelings toward the bookfair. These actions undermined our ongoing efforts to make our organizing and the bookfair reflect a culture of care, accessibility, and alternative practices that at the same time challenge how the dominant culture shapes spaces.

It was important to the current collective to address problematic behaviors, and how they've repeatedly played out to make the bookfair less welcoming to marginalized people, in order to move forward. Moreover, it was deeply important to us not simply to push through and avoid tough conversations, as we had done in the past. Instead, we wanted to understand the underlying biases, forms of socialization, and structures that had shaped our internal dynamics, not to mention the bookfair itself, and as a consequence, too often reified the logic of white supremacy in our processes and project. By taking internal care rather than ignoring painful tensions, we strived to take the time to ensure the well-being and longevity of our collective, and in ways that would increasingly extend solidarity to all at the bookfair.

So in 2024, our time and funding were spent on a mediation process, which was skillfully guided by two POC facilitators from an outside organization.

Unfortunately, while the mediation process was helpful at opening up a respectful dialogue, the main issues did not get resolved, much less even addressed. In the end, the collective members from whom the rest of us had expected a certain level of accountability, left the mediation before completion and resigned from the collective.

This type of process takes a long time and a lot of energy, and it felt particularly demoralizing that our effort was essentially for naught; thus our need to take an extended break.

While we were trying to recover and plan ahead, an infographic appeared online, pronouncing our bookfair "dead," coupled with an illustration of someone giving us the finger. It felt like an attack. To make matters worse, we learned from a second, widely circulated announcement that a group had appropriated the bookfair, organizing it at the same place and same time, with only a change of name. Moreover, the only time these organizers reached out to us (and one of our sponsors, behind our backs) was in spring 2024, to request that we transfer our funds to them. Before we had a chance to start organizing the 2025 bookfair, this group once again announced that they would be holding an anarchist bookfair at our usual time and location.

As a result, instead of bringing you the bookfair that you have come to know and love this May, we will be preparing a two-day event over two weekends this fall. And we aim to again bring you the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair in May 2026.

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair has always strived to be a place where anarchists and those curious about anarchism could come together to not only find educational materials but also experience care and community--something we've especially been expanding on the past several years to make the bookfair far more welcoming to far more types of ideas, practices, and people. We look forward to keeping that tradition alive.

Our current collective consists of BPOC as well as Jewish and Muslim anarchists. We hope to reach communities that have historically not been centered or given the space they deserve in the Montreal anarchist milieu. Stay tuned for what we hope will be an exciting return.

With love and rage,
Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Collective