Firestorm Books

Even a chipmunk knows that the boots do not love you back 🥾👅🚫🙅😤

Saturday @ 1pm – Asheville Animal Rights Reading Group
This group takes an animal-rights based philosophy, and looks at fiction, non-fiction, poetry and even articles to learn, to enjoy, and to figure out how we might be best of service to helping and saving these species we share the world with. This month's read is "Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era" by Sarat Colling!

Sunday @ 1pm – Asheville Prison Books Packaging Party
The Asheville Prison Books monthly meetup is an opportunity for new folks to learn about APB and plug in!

Monday (7/20) @ 6:30pm – Skill Share Discussion Circle: Scuppernong
This ongoing, community-led gathering exploring environmental resilience, skill sharing, and collective care. This session introduces Scuppernong, a locally-run privacy-respecting alternative to corporate tools like Slack and Google Drive built specifically for Western NC community groups and organizations. You'll leave knowing what it can do, how to get set up, and whether it's a fit for your group or project.

Tuesday (7/14) @ 5:30pm – Weekly Trans Writing Circle
A creative writing and co-working group for trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people with independent long and short form projects.

*Tragically, we don't sell this incredible shirt!*

(-Frog) https://firestorm.coop/calendar.html

Cover image description: A photo of a Firestorm collective member posing behind a felt event board with greenery and part of our mural in the background. The person has an illustrated chipmunk head . Their shirt features characters from Sailor moon, illustrated cops, and the text "You are not immune to copaganda/ they are not your friends/ the boots do not love you back."

Additional image description: All other images are promotional graphics for the Firestorm events this week.

New recurring event! 🌱

These are, to put it mildly, scary times to be caring for a young person. AI slop is targeting children while devouring our trees and water and joy at an unprecedented pace. Parents are in prison for possession of antifascist zines. Rent prices are astronomical. We show up for the children in our lives in spite of these impossible conditions. How can we carry some of that weight together? How do we celebrate the joys of raising the next generation of rabblerousers without grazing past the hard s**t?

Reject the mommy blog industrial complex! Grieve! Rage! Lean on each other!

While we expect that there will be differences in parenting approaches, we hope that we can come together around an ethos of mutual aid and against domination of adults and children alike!

Childcare will be provided on site. Please register at least 24 hours ahead of the event to sign your kiddo up :)

(-Frog)
https://firestorm.coop/events/3639-rad-parent-meetup.html

Image description: This event graphic features a photo of sprouting plants with a text overlay. Blue text reads "Rad Parent Meetup" in large font. Smaller text reads "Sunday, July 26th/ 1pm-2:30pm" The graphic also includes Firestorm's logo.

Hop, don't walk to snag one of these restocked tote bags! 🐸👜

Rep Firestorm out in the wild with this pileated woodpecker zinester designed by the one and only Erre, or make your stance on book bans known with the help of a bookish possum designed by our buddy (and Praireland defendant!) Des. Our totes are printed courtesy of our local queer-owned screen printing shop Black Moon Ink.

(-Frog)
https://firestorm.coop/catalog/type/10-bags-totes.html

Image description 1: A Firestorm collective member with an illustrated frog face poses in front of a tree showing off a tote bag. They are also holding a collection of "Frog and Toad." The bag reads “Firestorm” and features an illustration of a pileated woodpecker wearing punk accessories including a spiked collar and a vest.

Image description 2: A full body shot of a collective member with an illustrated frog face wearing a tote on their shoulder. They are also holding a collection of "Frog and Toad." The tote bag on the left reads “Trash Fascism Not Books” and features an illustration of a possum reading a copy of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus.”

Collectives who read together develop analysis together! 🧠🤓

Firestorm's current internal book club read is Cory Doctorow's new work of big tech criticism, "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI." What inspired this choice, other than the eye-catching cover, was a sense of growing unease around how the AI bubble has come for the book industry. Authors we loved are freely admitting in interviews to using chatbots to flesh out their new works. Books we stock turned out to likely have AI generated covers that fooled us at first (and even second) glance. The growing AI creep into our workplace left members of our collective feeling... icky. Without always having the language to articulate exactly why.

Doctorow's measured evaluation of the current state of AI technology, and the surrounding discourse, is highly readable for techies and luddites alike. While we may not be able to put the cat back in the bag, Doctorow helps us delineate between AI uses that could actually make our lives easier, and the far longer list that collapses under the weight of the hype, and the ecological and human costs that prop it up. He resists bowing to the "inevitability" of the AI takeover of jobs, particularly in artistic fields like ours. All of this helpfully grounded in the visual gag of the reverse centaur.

*Image created completely through the power of human imagination, camera angles, and an upsetting amount of packing tape. No AI necessary.*

(-Frog)
https://firestorm.coop/products/25031-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

Cover image description: A pink unicorn's head appearing to sit atop a human body wearing a striped shirt and gray pants. The creature "sits"on the shelf next to a stack of books, Corey Doctorow's "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI." The cover of the book also features an unsettling image of a horse figurine head stacked on top of a human buttocks and legs.

Image 2: A behind the scenes peak at how our reverse centaur stuffy was created, by taping two stuffies together with copious amounts of packing tape.

On Sunday afternoon, join us for a conversation with legal historian Gautham Rao whose new book, "White Power," examines the history of policing and slave patrols in the United States and the ways systems of surveillance and racial control shaped American governance and law.

Gautham offers a new interpretation of US history, speaking to the origins of today's persistence of white vigilance, white supremacist militia groups, and white racist cops determined to maintain power over Black people by force. Thanks to a community donor, copies of "White Power" will be available during the event for half price! Additional information about the event and book can be found at https://firestorm.coop/events/3619-policing-american-slavery.html.

FeministBookstore FirestormCoop (- L)

Image description: A promotional graphic for Policing American Slavery, an in-person event at Firestorm on July 5th at 3pm. The image features the cover of Gautham's book over a background of distressed barn wood. The book cover is black and white and includes a photo of a horse, evoking the use of horses by cops, rangers, and klansmen.