Publishing Talks: Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press

Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It has been an ongoing education talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. This latest episode features a recent conversation with Ramsey Kanaan about the anarchist publisher PM Press he founded in 2007, and his work in publishing, music and activism for the past many years. Ramsey has been a leader among the innovative, creative editors, publishers, and others in independent publishing and bookselling whose work is so important, especially now.

I met Ramsey years ago when he was working with activist AK Press he helped start in the UK. He later left AK, establishing PM Press in 2007 to focus on a wider range of literary publishing, and to reach a larger audience than AK nonfiction oriented publishing could do.

PM Press was originally based in the Bay Area and still maintains space there, but moved its main operations to Ithaca, New York in 2023, when it purchased the former Autumn Leaves bookstore space to establish its warehouse there. And there’s also a branch in the UK, so it’s pretty wide-reaching for an independent publisher. Publishing authors as varied as Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter Linebaugh, Silvia Federici, C.L.R. James, James Kelman, and Jonathan Lethem, as well as a plethora of newer and less well-known voices, PM has become one of the most successful radical publishers of modern times. Their list is impressive, including a range of books in fiction, art, music, politics, history, and culture in print, ebook, and audio formats.

PM’s publishes widely, including coloring books and cookbooks, polemics, memoirs, novels, pamphlets, treatises, manifestos, and comics in almost every topic imaginable – bicycles, vegetables, squatting, sex, sports, punks, Wobblies, self-defense, parenting, striking, and much more. PM brings tremendous energy to its publishing, reaching readers “by any means necessary” with unmatched creativity and gusto.

Aside from his work in books and publishing, Ramsey was also the vocalist of the Scottish punk band Political Asylum.

We had a great conversation about books, publishing, distribution and the current state of politics in America. Talking to Ramsey, it’s clear that the energy and strength of outsider publishing is stronger than ever, and that energy is needed now more than ever.

Check out the press and its books here.

You can join Friends of PM Press to support their work and get access to an array of essential books.

PM is an altogether terrific outfit keeping the flags flying – red, black, and rainbow.  What energy! What facts-on-the-ground! What excitement! What dreams!—Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All and coauthor of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

If a revolutionary’s first weapon is a book, PM Press has the arsenal. Their texts are battle plans for a new world.—Peter Werbe, The Fifth Estate

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Derrick Jensen: Lives Less Valuable

978-1-60486-045-0 – paperback – Flashpoint Press/PM Press – $18.00

Derrick Jensen is one of the most intelligent nonfiction writers around.  His intellectual ability, brilliant writing and passionate voice for nature, for the powerless (not just people, but our fellow plant and animal species), and for the wounded, have made him a hero for many who oppose the structures of modern society.  I was not familiar with his fiction before reading Lives Less Valuable.  It’s very difficult to write fiction with a political message, but Jensen succeeds here.  Even though the reader knows there is a political subtext, the story and the characters work well, they’re both believable and instructive.

The story centers on Malia, an environmental activist in a modern city where people are dying from a toxic river.  The corporation that is at the root of the problem does everything possible to maximize its profits and does not care about the environmental cost borne by the poor people of the city.  She is drawn into a complex web of events that forces her to make choices about her beliefs and what she must do to make meaningful change, and when she does, the effects of her choices resonate through the lives of many others.  And they do make a difference.

Talking to Derrick Jensen was a great experience for me.  He has so much to say about human beings, our relationship to nature, and the meaning of political action, not to mention writing and story telling.  In this interview he talked about many subjects, including the nature of activism, the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction, and the details of the writing of this book.  He’s as eloquent and brilliant a speaker as he is a writer.  Derrick Jensen truly is one of our great public intellectuals.  Please note that this interview is longer than usual at 32 minutes, but should reward the listener with a worthwhile experience.

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