Letters from the Edge: Outrider Conversations with Margaret Randall

Margaret Randall is a poet, writer, translator, photographer, and activist who has lived in New York, Mexico City, Havana, Cuba, Managua, Nicaragua, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, with short stays in North Vietnam and Lima, Peru. Her time in these places often coincided with major sociopolitical upheavals or pivotal historic moments. She edited an important bilingual literary magazine for eight years out of Mexico City El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn and has known some of the great minds of her generation. When she returned to the United States, the US government ordered her deported because of opinions expressed in some of her books, and she was forced to wage a five-year battle for restoration of citizenship. Randall is the recipient of numerous international awards and the author of over 200 books.

Judah Rubin is the editor of A Perfect Vacuum. His translation of Rodrigo Quijano’s writing, An Inherent Tear was published by Wendy’s Subway in 2024. A translation of Dalmacia Ruíz-Rosas Samohod’s Peligro de los Labios Rojos is forthcoming with Ugly Duckling Presse’s Señal series in 2025. 

“Both politically astute and personally intense, this wise book is both a mirror of and a model for our times. Here in 2025, looking back is foresight: Randall’s inherently creative resistance to both materialism and fascism is to maintain a fierce and inspiring optimism. So may we all.” —Bryce Milligan, poet, critic and publisher.

In More Letters from the Edge, Margaret Randall continues her exploration of the power of correspondence, revealing the intimate and unguarded exchanges that define lives lived at the margins of convention. Through letters, interviews, and fragments of memory, she invites us into conversations with four fearlessly radical writers, artists, and activists: Arturo Arango, Kathy Boudin, Jane Norling, and Robert Schweitzer. Their voices—translated, remembered, and preserved—offer urgent reflections on risk, resistance, and the act of making meaning in a world that, now more than ever, seeks to silence dissent. More than historical artifacts, these conversations bridge past and present, proving that the fight for creative and political integrity is never confined to a single era. More Letters from the Edge (New Village Press) is a testament to those who push against the edges, opening doors for all who follow.

Letters from the Edge (New Village Press) is collection of letters exchanged between the author and five “outriders” or artists who resist conformity to commercial, social, or political pressure.

Margaret Randall constructs conversations that open windows on four pivotal moments in her life and on world events by excerpting from letters she exchanged with five irreverent writers and artists: Walter Lowenfels, Laurette Séjourné and Arnaldo Orfila, Susan Sherman, and Greg Smith. This correspondence touches on important themes, such as social change, identity, art, and creative integrity—issues that were relevant then and remain so today. The letters are sometimes philosophical, sometimes intimate, and deal with family life as well as major creative projects (including literary political publishing) often taken on against daunting odds. Society continuously tries to subsume or shape influential rebel minds to its interests. Every generation has those who will not allow themselves to be silenced or controlled. Letters from the Edge is exciting evidence of this.