We hope so! Due to the pandemic, it hasn’t been possible to celebrate the annual London Radical Bookfair for the past three years. For those of you asking, we do hope to organise a bookfair in 2023. We will announce it here on our website and on our social media.
Thank you for your support so far!
We regret to announce that the London Radical Bookfair has been postponed till summer 2021. Our host venue, Goldsmiths University, is now closed until September and we thought it best to reschedule the fair to next year, to a hopefully more joyful time beyond the current health crisis.
We hope that you all stay safe and well and look forward to seeing you next year during better times.
Thank you to all who applied for a stall at the London Radical Bookfair 2020. We received an overwhelming number of applications for only 70 stalls. We look forward to showcasing an amazing range of radical publishers this June at Goldsmiths.
Those who were not allocated a stall have all been contacted and placed on the waiting list. Thank you so much for applying and for your interest in the bookfair. We’ll keep you all updated!
In a few weeks’ time, we will be adding the list of stallholders to the website. Stay tuned.
If you are interested in having a stall at the London Radical Bookfair this year, then from 1st of March onwards please send an email to cristina(at)housmans(dot)com with “stall application” in the subject line. In the email, tell us a little bit about yourself and your publications, and please include a link if possible or some images of your work.
Stall fees this year are £50 for a full stall (6ft) and £25 for half a stall.
The bookfair is run on a not-for-profit basis and sponsored by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers.
Applications for new stallholders at the London Radical Bookfair 2020 will open on 1 March. Keep your eyes 👀 peeled for announcements on this website and on social media on how to apply!
We are sad to announce that despite our best efforts the London Radical Bookfair will not be taking place in 2019. This is primarily down to the fact the main hall at Goldsmiths University will be undergoing some essential repairs throughout the year. All being well we will return to the venue in June 2020.
Despite not going ahead this year, we will be organising a range of other events:
-The Little Rebels Children’s Book Award and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing will both be going ahead as usual, with award ceremonies taking place in seperate locations. Please visit the respective website for details.
https://littlerebels.org
http://www.bread-and-roses.co.uk
-A decentralised Anarchist Festival will be taking place across the UK from Friday 31st May-Sunday 2nd June 2019. A great chance to get involved and set up your own events:
https://anarchistfestival.wordpress.com
And planned for November 2019 will be a Campaigning Conference that hopes to bring together under one roof the broadest range of grassroots campaign groups. Look out for that.
Hope to see you at one of the above or else at the bookfair in 2020!
A massive thank you to everyone who came down and took part in the LRBF 2018 and made it such a great event. We’ll be back in 2019, and plans are already afoot for expanding the fair. Hope to see you again and till then, keep supporting radical bookshops, bookfairs, publishers, zine makers and campaigns.
On 2nd June 2018 the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) will be holding the 6th London Radical Bookfair, and also celebrating the 7th Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing. These are grassroots projects: carried out with no corporate sponsorship* and with the work done voluntarily by a small group of people working in radical bookshops. It can be exhausting, but its worth it.
There are several key motivations for the effort: to promote radical books and the ideas within them, to create a welcoming space that brings new people into contact with our politics, to have common traditions that belong to our collective movements, and to have moments where like-minded people can come together in a united cause. In a virtual and fragmented world this last aspect becomes increasingly important.
Although the ARB’s activities were forged in the last decade, we are carrying the baton from the work done by our previous incarnation, the Federation of Radical Booksellers, out of which many bookfairs arose, including the London Anarchist Bookfair, International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books and the Socialist Bookfair. Time shows that these projects are fragile. Reliance on voluntary work and public good will keeps us independent but vulnerable.
At a time when so much energy is being spent trying to reclaim the Labour party from privatisers and neoliberals, it is particularly important not to forget our grassroots activities and institutions.
Radical bookfairs and bookshops are fragile, yet despite set backs there are reasons to be hopeful. Many new radical bookshops have opened in recent years, and a whole host of, primarily anarchist, bookfairs have sprung up around the country. But these activities happen against the odds and against the logic and pressures of market forces.
The point of all this is to say that radical bookshops and radical bookfairs cannot exist without your solidarity and support. We hope to see you on June 2nd: spread the word!
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*We thank the Barry Amiel & Norman Melburn Trust for the seed money that allowed us to launch the London Radical Bookfair and book awards, Ross Bradshaw and the GFTU for donating prize money towards our book prizes in previous years, and Housmans Bookshop for their continued support.
London Radical Bookfair 2020 