Arbeiter Ring Publishing

28/08/2024

25% off all books for Labour Day Weekend ⚙️
August 31st - September 2nd
Only at arpbooks.org 📚

We’ve been running our webshop now for almost exactly one year now, and we are very thankful for the continued direct support of ARP Books.

Please enjoy the long weekend courtesy of the labour movement with a 25% discount on all orders, and $10 flat rate shipping across Canada 📦!

Check out the slides for a small sample of our titles, and the wide variety of books we love to publish.

In perpetual solidarity, ARP Books 🤝

19/08/2024

Just landed in the office! Brand new to the Semaphore Series, Dogged and Destructive: Essays on the Winnipeg Police by James Wilt! Keep an eye out and mark your calendars for the book launch coming on September 24th!

“Part history, part manifesto, Dogged and Destructive exposes the brutality, corruption, and racism at the heart of the policing enterprise and offers us a vision of what we could do instead to create a safe, healthy, and just future.”
—Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing

Visit arpbooks.org to order your copy today!

07/08/2024

“This seems like a fruitful place for a writer to be working from—ambitious in scope, experimental in approach, and aimed at an audience of other people who want to transform things. Toews is leading by weird, refreshing example.“

—Gabrielle Willms, Public Parking

A fantastic in-depth conversation with Owen Toews by Gabrielle Willms about his debut novel Island Falls, as well as his first book Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg, settler colonialism, organizing for change, and much more up at

https://shorturl.at/MuPMT

15/07/2024

“This volume sits at the intersection of Indigenous scholarship, artistic resistance, cultural reclamation and healing. … Jack Horne’s TOL, NEW̱ SEN TŦE SOȽ: I KNOW THE ROAD chronicles the author’s journey as he confronts the pervasive normalizing of Eurocentric/white-centric cultural supremacy in academia and examines how academia continues to use supremacist ideologies to obstruct Indigenous scholarship in its institutions. He contrasts how this conflicts vastly with his W̱SÁNEĆ ways of knowing/being and doing and how knowledge transfer is enacted in his family, community and nation.”

—Monique Mojica, Guna and Rappahannock actor /playwright / dramaturg / artist-scholar, Chocolate Woman Collective

06/06/2024

We’re very happy to announce the forthcoming publication of As Is, a collection of poetry by Ben Robinson, this fall!

Poetry collection As Is is a study in place, the town of Hamilton Ontario, considering what it means to be connected to or attempt a connection to place as a settler. Many of the poems function as counter-histories, reading the local history and extracting details that get glossed over elsewhere: the first public building being a prison, the public hangings, the botched first treaty. Other poems are situated in the present, the personal, and look at how these founding errors ring through into the present, for both the individual and the community. As Is searches for alternative frames for defining a local identity: expanding the sense of time to include the prehistoric, the fossil record of mammoth and wapiti in the area, and expanding the sense of place to consider the treaty boundary as a possible framework for understanding the region. Unusually for a book of poetry, it attempts reckoning with actual historical record.

Ben Robinson is a musician and librarian living in Hamilton Ontario. He holds a B.A. in English at McMaster University and worked as the music director of the campus radio station. His first book, The Book of Benjamin, published by Palimpsest (2023), is an essay on names/naming.

Cover design by Bret Parenteau.

04/06/2024

We are so excited to announce the return of our Semaphore series of short polemical books on urgent contemporary issues, with a book by James Wilt!
Dogged & Destructive: Essays on the Winnipeg Police, will be released this fall:

Published on the centennial of the city and its police force, Dogged and Destructive is a short collection of critical and deeply researched essays about the history, violence, and costs of the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS). It argues that policing in Winnipeg should be studied and understood regardless of where one lives due to the city’s particular dynamics of settler-colonialism, enormous police budgets, and concerns about violence. The book provides a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the WPS and advocates for the imagining and pushing for alternatives to police power in Winnipeg and Canada.

“In the context of severe underfunding and total collapse or non-existence of other public services, police have successfully positioned themselves—with government
facilitation—as ultra-generalists in order to monopolize emergency response to the countless conflicts of a deeply unequal society, including interpersonal conflicts, traffic
offences, property theft or damage, mental health and substance use issues, and a huge assortment of other community issues, despite having no specific expertise or ability to deal with them.”

— James Wilt, from forthcoming book,
Dogged & Destructive

James Wilt is a writer and PhD candidate based in Winnipeg. He is the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk (Between the Lines, 2020) and Drinking Up the Revolution: How to Smash Big Alcohol and Reclaim Working-Class Joy (Repeater, 2022). His writing has appeared in many publications including The Walrus, The Guardian, Canadian Dimension, The Narwhal, and Briarpatch.

14/05/2024

We’re excited to be tabling at Critical Perspectives, Criminology & Social Justice National Conference at the University of Winnipeg, and are also dismayed by the University of Winnipeg’s attempt to restrict participants to this free conference, and the flow of knowledge between the conference and the student encampment. We look forward to dropping off a book bundle in order to contribute to the encampment’s Refaat Library.

08/05/2024

Several book publishers including ARP have signed on to this nation-wide call from organizations and unions for an arms embargo. Join us! https://armsembargonow.ca

12/01/2024

has launched a week-long global call for the reading of Palestinian poetry in public spaces, beginning on Monday with Read For Refaat. Refaat’s poem “If I Must Die” can be found on the Publishers For Palestine website translated into 39 languages.

https://publishersforpalestine.org/refaat/

27/12/2023

Big thank yous to and anyone who voted for us, and to for the interview: https://rb.gy/ar439q
link also in story.

Search the landfills without further delay. Permanent ceasefire now, free Palestine, free Gaza. We are still encouraging fellow publishers who haven’t yet to join the growing solidarity collective

https://publishersforpalestine.org/2023/11/15/statement-of-solidarity/

10/12/2023

04/12/2023

We are now offering $10 flat rate shipping across Canada when you order directly from our webstore! We're very grateful for the direct support many of you have shown us, and we will continue to provide links to local booksellers as well on our website.

We will ship orders weekly up until Dec 18th, and resume shipping orders in the new year.

Please note, for orders of 10 or more books, we ask that you reach out to us directly to arrange the order. For more information, please visit arpbooks.org/individual-orders.

04/12/2023

“My father recited and read many Persian poems to me as a child, so it definitely wasn't a form I was unfamiliar with. But overall, poetry came to me secondary in the trajectory of my life. I initially thought myself a fiction writer, and had been slowly working up to full length novels by writing tons of short stories in my highschool years. During my time there, a teacher had told me that poetry wasn't my strong suit, and to stick to fiction instead - as a very serious, sensitive, and insecure kid, I took that sentiment to heart and didn't doubt it for a second. It wasn't until my time in university that I felt permission to experiment and explore where my gut told me to go. That's when I got serious about poetry.”

Read the full interview with linked in story.

29/11/2023

Day One of Read Palestine Week. Publishers around the world from have collaborated to provide access to 30+ free ebooks, available through December 5 at publishersforpalestine.org in the categories of Poetry | Fiction | Literary Nonfiction | Literary Anthologies | History of Palestine | Palestinian Lives | Palestinian Arts & Culture | Palestine & Global Politics | Organizing, Resistance, and Solidarity for a Free Palestine.

(The great poster is from !)

28/11/2023

We are very excited to be releasing Nic Wilson’s debut book, Colossal Equine Statue this winter ❄️🐴🌒

Colossal Equine Statue (CES) is made up of a trilogy of constellation essays that track a number of recurring themes such as historical relation, mourning, and viewership. Many of these pieces have been conceived as part of Wilson’s visual art practice, and draw on a wide variety of source material and inspiration, from encyclopedias and reference books to poetry, philosophy, and recipes. The overall shape of the book is intended to represent points in a constellation and imagine how one might look at a sky filled with stars and find a world of meaning with many intricate odes of possibility for navigation. Unlike many works of historical non-fiction, CES uses a constantly shifting voice which swings between reporting, personal anecdote, enumeration, criticism, ekphrasis, and poetry to create unexpected encounters between different times and conceptions of reality.

Nic Wilson (he/they) is an artist and writer who was born in the Wolastoqiyik territory known as Fredericton, NB in 1988. He graduated with a BFA from Mount Allison University, Mi’kmaq territory, in 2012, and an MFA from the University of Regina, Treaty 4 Territory, in 2019 where he was a SSHRC graduate fellow. In 2021 they were long listed for the Sobey Art Award as a representative of the Prairies and the North. Fluent across media, Wilson creates videos, performances and artist books, and writes essays and art criticism. Their work often engages time, q***r lineage, decay, and the distance between art practice and literature. They were the 2022 writer in residence for G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. Their writing has appeared in publications such as BlackFlash Magazine, Peripheral Review, NORK, C Magazine, and Border Crossings.

25/11/2023

Repost from :

Announcing Read Palestine Week!
Nov. 29-Dec. 5. Read free books by Palestinian authors and books about Palestine all week, starting on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

We're adding more to our Free Palestine Books list every day.
Thanks to participating publishers, we now have ebooks in 6 languages, and in the categories of: Palestinian fiction, poetry, memoir, politics, culture, history, solidarity & more.

Find out more about Week at our website, publishersforpalestine.org.

23/11/2023

Drop all charges. No more political arrests and detainments for speaking the truth about genocide. Today is the last day to sign, at
http://bit.ly/CanLitResponds

17/11/2023

Ceasefire now! Publishers for Palestine members, with staff from and join protestors outside of the St Boniface office of MP Dan Vandal, who continues to refuse to call for a ceasefire. No business as usual!

07/11/2023

We are part of Publishers for Palestine, and one of the original publisher signatories to this letter, hosted on Verso’s page, that is calling for a ceasefire and end to genocidal violence, and an end to political repression in publishing.

Exclusions and repressions direct us to the reasons behind them, and our focus is not on the industry firings or cancellations (shameful as they are), but on their origins, on ending the ongoing genocide and exposing its geopolitical context. Of key importance to us is the written word’s capacity to advance a politics that is against occupation, apartheid, genocide, everywhere.

Dozens of publishers from around the world are signing on daily as translations of this statement are released in various languages. If you have a favourite publisher who you don’t see on the Publishers For Palestine list, please encourage them to sign on and get involved. The statement, and involvement in Publishers for Palestine is in no way limited to traditionally “radical” or “leftist” publishers.

Translations exist or are pending in Tamil, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, Indonesian, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Kiswahili, Hindi, Spanish, and French. This list is incomplete, but if you have translation expertise in a language not seen here, please reach out, and if you know of publishers in these languages who might sign on, please share. Link in story.

26/10/2023

"A sad, beautiful read, having experienced living in a village impacted by a major project and the divisions created by the company that still linger, Owen has captured the feelings of loss of a place we once knew. Thank you, Owen."
- Duncan Mercredi, author of mahikan ka onot

Huge thanks to and to everyone who came out last night for the launch of Owen Toews’s Island Falls! ❄️🌧️✊️

24/10/2023

ARP Books stands with Palestine; we call for an end to the current siege, to the long occupation and genocide, an end to Canadian government support for these atrocities, and to its ongoing war for profit practices globally; we call for an end to the mainstream media stance of either exploitation, or total exclusion of Palestinian voices who can contextualize both history and the moment; we celebrate the growing numbers of our publishing peers who have expressed the same, and encourage more to join us.

We look forward to releasing a joint letter of solidarity with Palestine, co-authored by an international group of publishers.

24/10/2023

Reposting from where you can read the full statement (linked in their bio) and Indigenous scholars can also sign on.

“We recognize the recent backlash that scholarly communities have experienced stems from concerted efforts to discourage dissent and isolate Palestinians from the global community through intimidation, threats, and harassment.

The signatories of this statement maintain our right and responsibility to engage in open dialogue on matters concerning Palestine and to be in relation with Palestinian people.”

23/10/2023

Thank you to everyone who came out to our joint poetry launch! It was such a treat to have an evening of poetry, discussion, and laughter with (natalie), , and rob mclennan.

A big thank you to our friends at for letting us use this incredible space.

All of our poetry is available at arpbooks.org 📚

22/10/2023

After a week that has been beyond belief, we are so looking forward to coming together for the launch of Owen Toews’s second book Island Falls this Wednesday. A novella that Toews developed through allegorizing local research, it presents a capsule of the capitalist strictures, social and spatial, and the underpinning violence of the “company town,” while using an intimate framing that explores how friendships inform political formation.

This Wednesday, October 25th, both in person and online, 7pm at McNally Robinson 🏘️🏘️ —view the full event listing in our story!

In the meantime, there is another rally for Palestine today in front of the CMHR at 2pm (see our stories for that as well!)

17/10/2023

Our office will be closed Friday as we participate in the Global General Strike for Palestine. We call on our publishing colleagues to join us.

16/10/2023

“Palestinian trade unions call on our counterparts internationally and all people of conscience to end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes—most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, as well as all funding and military research.” https://merip.org/2023/10/palestinian-trade-unions-call-for-an-end-to-arming-israel/ #:~:text=On%20Monday%20October%2018,the%20arms%20trade%20to%20Israel.

14/10/2023

In Solidarity With Palestine. Our stories are shadowbanned but you can sign at: http://surl.li/mduky

01/10/2023

Hello! We are posted at today! Happily apart of literary marketplace until 6 pm 📚✨

28/09/2023

Join us on October 21st at to celebrate ARP Books' latest poetry collections: lisan al'asfour (natalie hanna, Ottawa), Bebakhshid (Nina Mosall, Victoria), and World's End, (rob mclennan, Ottawa)! We’re so fortunate to be able to bring all three poets together in one room. With deeply interconnected themes of family and generational change, the event will feature readings from each poet, alongside discussions of each other's works.

This event is free, books will be available for sale.

25/09/2023

“What is this strange document? An essay, a lush story, a sort-of-report, an anatomy of evil? Here, Owen Toews flips the colonial tapestry and begins to separate the threads—group homes, company towns, unmarked graves and poisoned rivers that make up the everyplace of Island Falls. The result is an essential and beguiling counterhistory of life on this continent” - Ben Robinson

Mark your calendar for the Oct 25th launch of Owen Toews’ Island Falls !

ID: book cover, black and white collage by Bret Parenteau from suburban and landscape photos of mid-century small town vignettes, including sunbathers at a public pool, and someone mowing a lawn. Serif text in white at upper left: Island Falls; in black at lower right: Owen Toews