Astra Taylor

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Taylor grew up in Athens, Georgia,^[3] and was unschooled until age 13 when she enrolled in ninth grade.^[4] At 16 she abandoned high school to attend classes at the University of Georgia; at the university she studied Deleuze and Guattari under Ronald L. Bogue.^[5] She has described herself as a "teenage Deleuzian."^[6]

Taylor enrolled at Brown University, where she attended classes for a year before dropping out. Reflecting on her decision to leave, Taylor stated "Why had I felt compelled to enroll in an Ivy League school, to excel by the standards of conventional education and choose a 'difficult' major, instead of making my own way? What was I afraid of?"^[7] Taylor completed a Master of Arts in liberal studies at The New School, though stated that she ultimately "wearied" of academia.^[8]

Taylor has taught sociology at the University of Georgia and SUNY New Paltz. Her writings have appeared in numerous magazines, including Dissent,^[9] n+1,^[10] Adbusters,^[11] The Baffler,^[12] The Nation,^[13] Salon,^[14] and The London Review of Books.^[15]

Taylor is the sister of painter and disability activist Sunny Taylor,^[16] and is married to Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel.^[17] She joined Neutral Milk Hotel onstage for a number of shows in 2013 and 2014, playing guitar and accordion.^[18] She is a vegan.^[19] She lives in New York.^[20]

Her book The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2024 Governor General's Awards.^[21] The book was also a finalist for the 2024 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.^[22]

Taylor was active in the Occupy movement and was the co-editor of Occupy!: An OWS-Inspired Gazette with Sarah Leonard of Dissent magazine and Keith Gessen of n+1.^[23] The broadsheet covered Occupy Wall Street in five issues over the course of the first year of the occupation and was later anthologized by Verso Books.^[24] Taylor is a co-founder of Debt Collective, a debtors' union fighting to cancel debts.^[25][26]

Taylor has resisted the label "activist" in her writing^[27] and advocates organized movement building, which she says is a necessary supplement to activism which makes it more durable and effective.

She is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America^[28] and on the Progressive International council.^[29] She supports a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals. She was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".^[30]

Films

• Zizek!, 2005
• Examined Life, 2008
• What Is Democracy?, 2018^[31][32]

Writing

• Examined Life: Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers (editor), The New Press, 2009, ISBN 9781595584472^[33]
• Occupy!: Scenes From Occupied America (co-editor), Verso, 2012, ISBN 9781844679409^[34]
• The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, 2014, ISBN 9780007525591^[35]
• "The faux-bot revolution", in A Field Guide to The Future of Work, RSA Future Work Centre, 2018^[36]
• Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone, Metropolitan Books, 2019, ISBN 9781250179845
• Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition (forward), Haymarket Books, 2020, ISBN 9781642594003^[37]
• Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions, Haymarket Books, 2020, ISBN 9781642594546^[38]
• The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (CBC Massey Lectures), Anansi Press, 2023, ISBN 1487011938