fiction

Featured articles

The Anarchists’ Noël: Christmas Tales from “Le Libertaire” (1899-1913)

December 26, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur
Links: The Anarchists’ Noël (pdf) ‘Christmas’ [category feed] Posting anarchist Christmas stories has become something of a tradition here in recent years, with some of the best coming from the individualist press, such as the various pieces by E. Armand and Gigi Damiani’s “Jesus and Bonnot: A Christmas Tale.” So I had been intending right along to steal a bit of time before the holiday rolled around to seek out a few new tales to translate. And then a mix of other tasks — work on the “Encounters with Anarchist Individualism,” native seed stratification, etc. — just completely wiped it […]
Working Translations

Four Tales by Brutus Mercereau (1925-1926)

July 18, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur
Brutus Mercereau, “Les Corbeaux,” L’Insurgé 1 no. 30 (28 Novembre 1925): 3. Brutus Mercereau, “L’Ane,” L’Insurgé 1 no. 31 (5 Décembre 1925): 3. Brutus Mercereau, “Le petit chat,” L’Insurgé 1 no. 33 (19 Décembre 1925): 2. Brutus Mercereau, “Les contes de l’Insurgé : Le rat,” L’Insurgé 2 no. 41 (13 Février 1926): 3. [Working translations by Shawn P. Wilbur]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “A Rocket of Iron” (1902)

August 11, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
It was one of those misty October nightfalls of the north, when the white fog creeps up from the river, and winds itself like a corpse-sheet around the black, ant-like mass of human insignificance, a cold menace from Nature to Man, till the foreboding of that irresistible fatality which will one day lay us all beneath the ice-death sits upon your breast, and stifles you, till you start up desperately crying, “Let me out, let me out!” For an hour I had been staring through the window at that chill steam, thickening and blurring out the lines that zig-zagged through […]