We are all grateful to Fredy Perlman, born August 20, 1935, for his activist and intellectual life and legacy.  The opportunity to collectively read (or re-read) Letters of Insurgents – in an age which is generationally beyond its moment of writing but nonetheless still evokes the same clouds of internal and external repression that he grasped so clearly – has been a joy throughout this Insurgent Summer.

Due to the length of Sophia’s Fifth Letter, we will spend one week reading Yarostan’s Fifth Letter (for July 9), and then the following week reading Sophia’s (for July 16).  Good news for anyone falling behind, as Yarostan’s is less than 50 pages, a good chance to catch up!

You may have noticed some improvements to the site over the past few days.

• The Frequently Asked Questions page has been substantially updated;
• The new versions of the downloadable Full-Text copies of all the Letters have been posted;
• The Forum has been expanded to include a Daily Discussion, No-Spoiler Forum as well as a Forum for Political Discussions that extend beyond the immediate concerns with Letters of Insurgents; in addition, IP tracking/validation has been turned off;
• A list of Elsewhere Insurgents, folks who expect to blog the reading on their own sites, is now on the Front Page, so far including viva la ilusión and I Just Read About That….  We also hope to cross-post some of their work here.  To be added to this list, just drop a quick Comment below!

Feel free to Introduce yourself below and over in the Forum, and let us know you’ll be along for the read!

Over at the Anarchist Library, there are now fully-searchable and beautifully formatted versions of each chapter of Letters. Shortly, all of the existing Chapter links on this site will be temporarily discontinued and transferred over to that site. They can be read directly online or printed out in a variety of formats and sizes (including A4 and Letter, the latter being the standard U.$. size).

Many thanks to members of the Anarchist Library – an informal, internet-based group of anarchists currently putting online every digitally-available anarchist book, essay, story and article, using only Free Software and Open Formats to produce typographically accurate, easy to parse, clean textual treatments of anarchist texts.  This is a key step for the future availbility of Letters of Insurgents, which has been out of print for many years now!

Be sure to check out other Fredy Perlman texts over the Anarchist Library, too!

In exactly a week, we will begin the first posts discussing Letters of Insurgents. The reading for the first week is short, so there’s plenty of time to get started over the next few days! And remember, if you haven’t been able to locate a copy of the book, all of the chapters can be downloaded for free here at Insurgent Summer, in full-text and/or audio!

Please help us to further advertise Insurgent Summer to all your friends! Send them a link to this site, or copy this announcement onto your Twitter feed or web site!

What is this summer’s most radical online project? Insurgent Summer, a reading and discussion of Fredy Perlman’s Letters of Insurgents. Beginning June 11 and concluding on August 20, we will be posting discussion pieces, reflections, and analysis on this most important of anarchist works of fiction.

We will be working on the forums over the next few weeks, although many of them will not be active until the reading schedule starts.  Currently, you can register as a user and organize a reading group locally. Thanks to openguild.net for all it’s hosting and technical help!

We are getting closer to the kick-off date for this reading.  Artnoose made these most excellent posters so that you can publicize it in your neighborhood. Have you thought about starting a reading group?

See the facebook post to get your free copies.

This site is the “home base” for the Summer 2010 reading of Fredy Perlman’s Letters of Insurgents.  Join Guides and Guests beginning June 2010 (approx.) for a scheduled, weekly, “no spoiler” reading of Letters.  Each week, three Guides will post comments on the week’s reading (about 75 pages), readers will reply, and we will delve into the depths and riches of this monumental classic of anarchist fiction and morality!

Please register and join the RSS feed on the right, so that you can be apprised of updates over the next few months: Bios for the Guides; the official Reading Calendar; available copies of Letters, and more!