Guest judges for the Bread and Roses Award 2014

We’re delighted to announce the judges for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2014.

Jess McCabe

Jess McCabe is editor-at-large of the F-Word blog, which continues to be highly influential in debates around contemporary feminism. The Guardian listed it as one of The World’s 50 Most Powerful Blogs in 2008, and it continues week-on-week to chart in the Top 50 most visited political blogs in the UK.

Seumas Milne

Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. He was the Guardian’s comment editor from 2001 to 2007 after working for the paper as a general reporter and labour editor. He has reported for the Guardian from the Middle East, eastern Europe, Russia, south Asia and Latin America.

He is the author of ‘The Enemy Within: Thatcher’s Secret War Against the Miners’ (Verso 2004) and ‘The Revenge of History: The Battle for the Twenty-first Century’ (Verso 2012).

Nina Power

Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University. She is the author of ‘One-Dimensional Woman’ (Zero Books 2009), co-editor of Alain Badiou’s ‘On Beckett’ (Clinamen 2002), and the author of several articles on European Philosophy, atomism, pedagogy, art and politics.

Nina also writes for several magazines, including New Statesman, New Humanist, Cabinet, Radical Philosophy and The Philosophers’ Magazine. She is reviews editor for The Philosophers’ Magazine and also runs a film club (Kino Fist) in her spare time.

Stop Press: 2012 Winner Announced

In the centenary year of the infamous Bread and Roses strike, the Alliance of Radical Booksellers is proud to announce the winner of the first annual Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years clinched the prize in the final hour, following a reported deadlock between the guest judges.

The judges felt that this brilliantly researched book was “engaging, readable, relevant, motivated by a clear political will, and utterly indispensable, not only for understanding the terms of the world we live in, where they came from, but also for what we do about changing them”.

Although academic in its scope and scale, the judges commended Graeber for the quality of the language, and effort to make the ideas accessible and readily comprehensible.

Graeber’s book narrowly came through after judges struggled to pick a winner between it and Nicholas Shaxson’s Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the men who stole the world, which they commended for its thoroughness of research, and ‘usefulness’ in the current political climate.

2012 Shortlist Announced

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers is proud to announce the shortlist for the first annual Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. With a prize of £1,000 for the winning author to be announced on 1st May 2012, the Bread and Roses Award aims to promote the publication of radical books, to raise the profile of radical publishing, and to reward exceptional work.

The shortlist consists of seven books:

Counterpower: Making Change Happen by Tim Gee

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as it Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made it edited by Nadia Idle and Alex Nunns

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

Magical Marxism by Andy Merrifield

Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent by Laurie Penny

Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson

For more information on all the shortlisted titles, visit our shortlist page.

We’re afloat!

Photographic evidence of the launch event has trickled its way to us. This took place at the Chapter and Verse festival at the wonderful Bluecoat in Liverpool, along with the official launch of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers. Speeches were made, songs were sung (by the Bread and Roses choir), and a fine time was had by all.

Ross Bradshaw announces the Bread and Roses award, with the Bread and Roses choir in attendance, and, um, bread and roses

The Bread and Roses choir sing The Internationale

Shining in the Morning Star

The Morning Star has printed an article by Ross Bradshaw about the Bread and Roses Award, under the lovely title Radical Rosette. It finishes with a quote from Anne Beech at Pluto Press:

“The prospect of an alliance of radical booksellers awarding a prize is an enticing one, given that they represent some of the most passionate and committed booksellers on the planet!”

2012 Award Ceremony date and venue

We’re delighted to announce that the winner of the first Bread and Roses Award will be announced on May 1st 2012, with the award being presented at Clapham’s Bread and Roses pub – an ideal venue, not just because of the shared name, but because of the pub’s connection with the Workers Beer Company and the Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Union Council, which founded the pub.

Further details to follow…

Launching the Bread and Roses Award

The national launch of the Bread and Roses Award will be a featured event at the Alliance of Radical Booksellers Symposium, which takes place at The Bluecoat in Liverpool on Thursday 13 October 2011 as part of their Chapter and Verse literature festival.

The Bread and Roses Award will be launched at 2pm.

The Symposium provides a forum for debate about the past, present & future of the radical book-trade. News from Nowhere & other radical bookshops from around the country – some old, some new – will guide us through the ups & downs, and future prospects of the trade. Free, but tickets are required – contact The Bluecoat.