Anton Marks has always written from inside the life he is living. Much of his non-fiction grows directly out of lived experience: years spent in intentional communities, life in a region shaped by ongoing conflict, and long-term work with young people in informal educational settings. Writing and editing have never been abstract or detached practices for him, but ways of making sense of real situations, real tensions, and real relationships.

Alongside working closely with people, Anton has written and edited extensively - articles, essays, educational materials, exhibition texts, and collaborative publications. These texts are grounded in observation, conversation, and participation, often emerging from shared experiences rather than from theory alone. Editing, in particular, has been central to his work: helping ideas find clarity, shaping collective voices, and turning lived moments into language that can be shared with others.

Informal education has provided a framework for much of this writing. Anton has worked for many years with young people, creating spaces that encourage questioning, responsibility, and engagement with difficult ideas. Living and working in a conflict zone has sharpened his sensitivity to complexity and contradiction, and has shaped both the tone and urgency of his writing. In these contexts, language matters - how things are named, what is left unsaid, and how stories are told.

Turning to Story

After many years of writing non-fiction rooted in political, educational, and communal life, Anton began to explore fiction as another way of working with experience. The Louise Michel short story series represents his first sustained engagement with storytelling. Fiction offered space to explore uncertainty, emotion, and moral choice in ways that non-fiction sometimes constrains.

Louise Michel appealed to Anton as a figure who embodied many of the tensions he has long engaged with: education and rebellion, care and resistance, ideals tested by reality. Writing her story for younger readers became a way of continuing his educational work through narrative rather than instruction.

Work Beyond the Page

Today, Anton continues to combine writing, editing, and education. He is currently developing a travelling exhibition that draws on historical texts and lived experience, designed to open conversations in communities across the United States. Like his writing, the exhibition is grounded in participation and dialogue, inviting people to connect history with their own questions and realities.

For Anton Marks, writing - whether non-fiction, editorial, or fictional - is inseparable from lived experience. It is a way of thinking in public, of staying accountable to the realities one inhabits, and of inviting others into that ongoing conversation.