Who is CAW
We are a Collective of Anarchist Writers, a Corvid Appreciation Working-group, a cry of autonomy and freedom with many acronymic meanings! We want CAW to be an alternative arts and media platform built on the diverse writings, collaborations and offerings of carla joy bergman, Shuli Branson, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil.
carla joy bergman (she/they): these days, I dabble with poetry, writing, and storytelling, and a lot of dreaming with my pals. I am a transdisciplinary artist and writer and I like to bring folks together to co-learn and make beautiful things. Through my creative endeavours, I aim to open realms of autonomy, reciprocity, art, creativity, mutuality, joy, and challenge empire. Because I tend to orient towards collaboration — with both my fellow humans and non-human friends (yes, crows!) — being part of CAW is the best! And, Doing it Together is how I like to make worlds, stories, and media that aim to incite joy, rage, and belonging.
Over the past 30 years, my time in and with community has been mostly about keeping the embers burning with and for the youth and the coming generations. I co-authored Joyful Militancy, edited Trust Kids: Stories of Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy, edited Radiant Voices, and collectively worked on a couple other books, and created some other writings along the way. Whether it's through my art or writing or how I live in community, lately I have double downed on my commitment to living in mutuality and reciprocity with humans, more than humans, and the land, because we are entangled, and because we must.
As part of CAW I will be sharing my newer podcast, Walking With Change, some essay style writings that tend to be more like musings and my feeling-thinking, and I will sprinkle in some fiction & poetry too. There will be collaborative works as well, and some interview style conversations with other writers and artists! As always, I will be making and sharing a few analog shiny things—especially zines and stickers, and whatever else pops up. I might also offer some workshops and other ways to engage. PS: I’m very excited to be part of CAW!
Dani Burlison (she/her): I am a writer, teacher, zine-maker, community herbalist, and Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner from a working-poor family in rural Northern California. My books include “Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country” (co-editor, AK Press, 2025), “Some Places Worth Leaving” (Tolsun Books, 2020), and “All of Me: Love, Anger and the Female Body” (PM Press, 2019). Most of my writing (journalism, book reviews, fiction, humor, sentimental sappy stuff) is all over the place, including several anthologies, zines, and online and print publications. A single parent of two rad young adults, I am also obsessed with my two teen cats.
After spending thirty years living in California’s North Bay Area (Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok Land), I’ve been officially priced out and am currently seeking an affordable, sustainable life. Some say I used to be very funny but capitalism has really been bumming me out.
Dani’s offerings at CAW include columns profiling/celebrating mutual aid networks, radical artists, and working class witches. She’ll also quite likely offer other writing on topics related to climate and class justice, dispatches from the road, and an occasional writing workshop and zine. If she feels especially motivated, she might offer an online trauma-informed yoga class or two as a little treat.
Shuli Branson (she/they): I spend much of my working time--and beyond--writing, translating, and teaching, while somehow living in so-called New York. Among other things, I wrote Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life (Pluto Press), edited Surviving the Future: Queer Abolitionist Strategies (PM Press), and translated gay theorist and militant Guy Hocquenghem’s second book Gay Liberation after May 68. From my experience helping to organize the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair for the last number of years, I have come to see myself as a kind of anarchist Mrs. Dalloway: a hostess trying to bring brilliant people together to do wonderful things.
After contributing as a host to the long-running anarchist radio show The Final Straw, I started my own podcast, The Breakup Theory, which features conversations about ending things and collective liberation. You can find my writings in traditional journals and magazines as well as zines. Recently, I have been considering the limits of anarchism and how we can emphasize our desires and the seduction of joining the struggle to destroy this world.
As part of CAW I will produce regular episodes of The Breakup Theory, and write regular short-form (and long-form) essays that use contemporary moments of struggle to make connections and elaborate possible new methods and tactics. I want to do a written version of the podcast’s agony letters along with other collective members to address anonymous breakup stories. I also plan to host online book clubs.
Vicky Osterweil (she/her): I am a worker, writer and agitator based in so-called Philadelphia. I have spent a decade and a half engaged in and writing on abolitionist, housing, trans liberation and anti-capitalist struggle and action. I’m the author of two books, In Defense of Looting (Bold Type, 2020) and The Extended Universe (Haymarket, 2025), and put together a roundtable for the journal “Diversity of Aesthetics” with Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and Rinaldo Walcott, which will be collected with the previous two issues into a single volume, Diversity of Aesthetics (Common Notions, 2025).
My writing has appeared all across the internet, and I was once so consistently shrill about video games that I was named “Critical Distance Blogger of the Year” for my Well Played series at Real Life Magazine. You can usually find me posting through it on Bluesky (VickyACAB) or Letterboxd (NoCopZone).
My offerings at CAW will include a mix of writings on current events, organizing and movement thoughts, radical history, trans autonomy, neuro-divergence and mad justice, movie and culture reviews, podcast appearances and occasional speculative and horror fiction. I am also unduly excited about the zine and sticker library.