EDITOR & ARTIST
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Ben Stahnke
Ben is an educator, organizer, and artist working on the intersection of political ecology, education, and print. Ben holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental studies, a M.A. in political philosophy, and is currently pursuing a second doctorate in education.
 

MANAGING EDITOR
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Nate Reed

 Nate is an educator and a union organizer, holding a Bachelor's Degree in secondary education with a concentration in life sciences. His research interests include the intersection between natural science, educational theory, philosophy, and Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. Ethan is currently employed as a high school science teacher.

 

ASSOCIATE EDITORS
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Jarrod Grammel
Jarrod is a worker, a political philosopher, and an historian. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in philosophy from George Washington University with a minor in history. Although his research is varied, his main areas of interest are fascism, political violence, labor history, and modern German history.

Christian Noakes

Christian is an urban sociologist and a geographer whose work is grounded in historical materialism and anti-imperialism. Much of his work looks at the relationship between capitalism and the built environment. He has contributed to several publications including An Spréach, Marxism-Leninism Today, and Cosmonaut.

Antony LeRoy

Antony is a Ph.D. candidate in English literature. They are a critical theorist who explores the beginnings of capitalism through their work in the Early Modern Period. Their areas of expertise are economic, queer, and critical race theory. They are currently working on a forthcoming book titled The Market of Eden for Iskra Books.

 

EDITORIAL BOARD
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Joshua A. Hodges
Joshua is a Marxist-Leninist academic with a Ph.D. in fire ecology. They are an emergency services volunteer born and raised in country Australia—and are a prolific poet, artist, playwright and author. They came to revolutionary politics through their work with First Nations Australians—and a love of their Catholic Irish and Mancunian heritage. Joshua's work with Iskra Books focuses on eco-philosophy, language activism, decolonisation, and Australian communist history.

Talia Lux
Talia holds a Master's Degree in library and information science, and a Bachelor's Degree in art history. She studies Jewish history, with an emphasis in anti-zionism, editorial cartoons and their impact on the working class, and communist history more generally. She has been speaking out against injustice for as long as she can remember, and firmly believes in Fred Hampton's statement that, "theory with no practice ain't shit."

Taylor R. Genovese

Taylor is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program at Arizona State University, where he draws on his background in sociocultural anthropology, political theory, and religious studies. His research focuses on investigating the overlaps, continuities, disjunctions, and distortions of techno-utopianism—from the Russian Cosmists at the turn of the 20th century to Silicon Valley technologists at the turn of the 21st. Taylor is an organizer with AFT Academics and the Phoenix chapter of the IWW. More at taylorgenovese.com or on Twitter @trgenovese.

Nicholas Troy
Nick holds a M.Sc. in historical studies and is interested in inter-imperial legal contests in the early modern Americas, as well as the cultivation and contestation of space in peripheral areas and how such practices have influenced the cultural and political development of the colonial powers.

Sam Glasper
Sam is a Marxist-Leninist writer and organiser from County Durham in North East England. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in international politics from Manchester Metropolitan and a Master of Arts in politics and international relations (political theory) from Durham University. His main interests and specialties are social movements, the conduct for emancipatory struggle and the history of radical political thought. He is a member of the revolutionary communist organisation Red Fightback and a union member of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Lydia Kurtz

Lydia is a recent graduate of civil and environmental engineering with a minor in religion. They plan to go to grad school to further study the human-environment nexus in relation to Marxist-Leninist theory. They are dedicated to all things liberation and are grounded in a love for humanity, community, and the planet.

Thomas Joyce

Tom's undergraduate and M.A. degrees are in history and American studies, where his focus was on post-WW2 gender history and how men’s relationship to white-collar work impacted ideas on body image and masculinity. His current research interests are in education reform and the influence of neoliberalism on teachers and students.

Jeff Korolev
Jeff works as a neuroscientist. He is interested in the dialectics of neuroscience as well as the efforts of socialist countries to promote collectivist social outlooks. 

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Pauline Elevazo

Bio forthcoming.

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David Peat

David, editor and copy-editor for both Iskra Books and Peace, Land, and Bread, is a student of Marxism-Leninism from Lancashire, England, who organises with Red Fightback. He has a B.A. in philosophy and is interested in political economy, ecology, and revolutionary education. 

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Maia Villalba

Maia Villalba is a 21-year-old Chinese-Cuban communist, organizer, and abolitionist from Lower Manhattan. At New York University, she concentrates in Social and Cultural Analysis at the College of Arts and Sciences and serves as the President of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Positive Club (SRH+). As an organizer, she develops political education and cultural programming to cultivate solidarity between the New York City community and the Young Lordes Collective, a local youth organization working at the intersection between activism and artistry. Featured in Vogue, Nowness, and Peace, Land, and Bread, Maia is a budding voice of contemporary communist scholarship from the Marxist-Leninist perspective. In her most recent work, Wretched Women: A Manifesto on Abolition, Anti-Globalization, and the International Struggle for the Commons, she exposes the dark underbelly of global corporate development and explains how social practices, acts of provisioning, and forms of peer governance offer practical tools of resistance against the forces of late stage capitalism. Her manifesto is set for publication by Iskra Books in 2023.

Red Starr
Red is a 2018 Seminary graduate. Her research interests include: intersections of communism and theology, LGBT Issues, Ho Chi Minh Theory, and analyses of popular culture. Red experienced a socialist response to COVID-19 pandemic first-hand while living in Vietnam. She has since returned to organize and educate in the US.

Tharron Combs

Tharron is a student of history, a revolutionary socialist, and a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. His primary research interests are in Detroit labor activism, black liberation, and the pan-African idea. He's been involved in various protest movements and initiatives against police brutality, imperialist war, and militant white nationalism in the United States, among other things. He takes pride in working every day to advance the cause of liberation for the working class.

Shane L. Pick

Shane is a member of the Communist Party of Canada as well as zone delegate and educator for the Korean Friendship Association, Canada. His work is built around trying to shine a light on the truth about DPRK; a truth that is heavily obscured by the imperialist media. Shane studies scientific socialism extensively and strives to educate as many people as possible on it, as well as the revolutionary Juche idea, including its validity and universality on a variety of platforms.

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PUBLISHER
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Iskra Books