Conceived in 2009 and established in 2012 in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Common Notions Press “was born in those heady days of the Egyptian Revolution and the Arab Spring, the anti-austerity resistance in Greece, the movement of the squares in Spain, the student movement in the UC system, and the Wisconsin teachers’ strike, and then Occupy Wall Street,” says director, publisher, and editor Malav Kanuga. Now operating out of Philadelphia, where Kanuga has lived since 2018, Common Notions seeks to publish “relevant and engaging books that respond to the needs of contemporary social movements and nurture the radical imagination.” He adds, “We are a comradely press that believes the strongest books emerge through close collaboration with their authors.”
Recent titles include the novel Red Flour (2026) by Seraj Assi and the nonfiction book The Digital Revolution: Loss of Self and Humanity (2026) by George Eastman. Reflecting on the press’s name, Kanuga says, “I loved the idea for a press to be straightforwardly but also provocatively declaring that all of these bold, radical ideas it’s publishing are really just common notions. That these ideas come from all corners of society and belong to all of us.” Committed to a visual aesthetic that is “as bold and imaginative as the writing,” the press designs book covers that often leverage the visual languages of street posters, pamphlets, underground publications, artists’ books, and other media embedded in grassroots movements. Currently open for submissions, Common Notions publishes twelve to fifteen books per year of predominantly nonfiction, though the press also publishes fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Kanuga finds operating a small press galvanizing: “We can build a different kind of cultural infrastructure,” he says, “one rooted in relationships rather than consolidation, collective imagination rather than algorithms, and the idea that narrative power should belong to communities themselves.”
