VAGABONDS is a platform for the radical imagination.
We publish short, pamphlet-style books with Pluto Press and a hybrid newsletter and podcast on Substack.
VAGAGBONDS is edited by Max Haiven with a little help from his friends.
To purchase VAGABONDS books worldwide, visit the website of Pluto' Press.
The VAGABONDS editorial advisory board includes Phanuel Antwi, Sita Balani, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Manolo Callahan, Isa Fremeaux, Stefano Harney, Marc Herbst, Valeria Graziano, Bue Rübner Hansen, Brian Holmes, Jay Jordan, Eunsong Kim, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Alana Lentin, Julio Linares, Tomislav Medak, Eli Meyerhoff, Nick Mirzoeff, Massimiliano Mao Mollona, Annie Paradise, Robbie Richardson, Jerome Roos, Brett Scott, Sarah Stein Lubrano, Ezra Winton, Jamie Woodcock, and Manuela Zechner.
Submissions
VAGABONDS publishes short, provocative books and incendiary open letters that fan the flames of discontent and excite the radical imagination.
Explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, feminist, queer, and anti-colonial, we aim to publish work that will inspire the next cycle of militant struggles and also keep the soul fed in dark times.
Since 2020 we have published nine books, each of them unique. We have explored how “pirate care” became a new horizon of struggle, how palm oil created and destroyed the world, how Black people are “loved to death” in the racial embrace, and how visual activism has contended with the genocide in Gaza. Our books have proposed how to abolish the US dollar, how to start an insurgent health collective, how to study with grassroots social movements, and how to scuttle your art career to defend the land of which you are a part. In 2026 we are launching an online series of open letters tackling some of the most vexing problems of our times.
VAGABONDS cautiously welcomes pitches for both books and letters from established and emerging writers who have taken the time to familiarize themselves with our catalogue and agenda and can articulate the place their work might find within it. While we publish what is conventionally known as non-fiction, we are rule-breakers and welcome authors who employ poetics, experimentation, and play. We do not publish academic arguments or partisan takedowns.
VAGABONDS holds all its publications to the highest standard. We want work that is
radical in the ideas it presents and the way those ideas are presented,
rigorous in argumentation and in the evidence presented, and
resonant with daring readers from a wide variety fo backgrounds. We aim to publish work that is not for everyone but that has many points of access and we have little patience for language that is unnecessarily obscure. We are not afraid of texts that are demanding of our readers, but we demand those text be worth our readers’ time and devotion.
If you might like to write a letter or a book for VAGABONDS, you are invited to write a short pitch to the editor, Max Haiven.
Pitches should be no longer than a few short paragraphs and convey:
What is important and unique about what you want to write? We want arguments that make people sit up and take notice.
Why you think it fits in the VAGABONDS series and would be of interest to our readers?
Who you are and why are you the one to write about this subject? You might include one link to a relevant short piece of your writing elsewhere. Please don’t send complete drafts, just a short pitch. Please never send email attachments. We will do our best to read every pitch with care and attention, but we cannot guarantee we will reply. Don’t take it personally. Life is short and the inbox is long.
Pitches may be sent to editor at vagabonds.xyz
Letters
Authors who are interested to write for our series of open letters should consult previous examples and the following guidelines carefully before pitching an idea.
Letters must be addressed to a real individual, living or dead and should playfully inhabit the epistolary form. They ought to begin with a salutation (”Dear...”) and end with a valediction (”Always yours in the revolution...”).
Letters must be fewer than 3,000 words long.
We encourage a strong lead (the reader should have a good sense of what the theme is from the first paragraph) and all the beauty you can muster.
Writers can expect to work closely with the editor, who is said to be quite demanding. You might be asked to rewrite or heavily edit your letter before publication. In a world of fast content that is easily forgotten, we strive for influence and excellence.
Authors are strongly encouraged to make an audio or video recording of their letter for the VAGABONDS podcast, or to allow us to do so on their behalf.
We publish everything under Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND) on our Substack platform. Upon publication, we offer authors a nominal honorarium of the equivalent of $200 CAD. We wish it could be more, and we’re working on it.
We rarely accept anonymous or pseudonymous contributions, but it’s not impossible.
Books
Authors wishing to pitch book projects are strongly encouraged to first pilot their ideas in our Letters series. We use this as a space to test the resonance of ideas and the working relationship between author and editor. VAGABONDS books are between 25-30,000 words in length and are best conceived as long essays or cohesive and self-contained creative projects. We are open to experimental, poetic and artistic forms that fit within our books’ uniform tall and thin format and within the broad scope of Pluto’s mandate to publish “anti-capitalist, internationalist and politically independent” non-fiction. We never publish edited collections although we do sometimes publish collaborative work by many authors, so long as it has a cohesive voice. We only publish original work that has not appeared elsewhere, with the exception of original translations. The process for contracting and publishing a book includes our partners at London’s Pluto Press.
Authors should pitch a concept to the editor, who may choose to encourage the creation of a more in-depth proposal, which typically includes a comprehensive overview, an account of other relevant writing on or near the subject and how the proposed book will be different, and a draft of a chapter or two. Authors can expect to work closely with the annoying but generous editor to refine the proposal to ensure its greatest chance of success.
All proposals are sent out for peer review to two people with relevant expertise and authors are invited to respond to their assessments before all this documentation is assembled and sent to both the VAGABONDS Editorial Advisory Committee and Pluto’s editorial committee. If both bodies approve the proposal, Pluto will pursue a contract to publish the book.
It is very rare that a book will appear in fewer than 12 months from the date it is contracted, in part because all completed manuscripts are sent for a second round of peer review (sometimes to the same reviewers as above), an open, dialogic process that culminates in an online meeting between authors, reviewers and editors. Our goal is to cultivate both the rigour and the conviviality of the peer review process and we see books as, in part, a collective venture.
Authors negotiate rights to and royalties for their books with Pluto, but we are striving towards Creative Commons. In any case, the text (though not necessarily the formatting) of all VAGABONDS book may be shared freely online one year following its first publication.
