SAM YAN PRESS
Publishing
Courage in Thailand
Publishing courage in Thailand
Sam Yan Press is an independent, student-founded press based in Bangkok. We publish books, translations, and public projects that defend freedom of thought, human rights, historical memory, feminism, and democratic life.
In a time of censorship, intimidation, and forgetting, we believe publishing is a form of public courage.
Why we exist
Sam Yan Press was founded to make space for ideas and voices that powerful institutions often ignore, silence, or push aside. We publish not only to inform, but to widen the democratic imagination in Thailand.
Our work brings together translation, critical thought, student activism, community memory, and public debate. We believe books can help people think more freely, remember more truthfully, and act more courageously.
BOOKS
A catalogue for freedom
At Sam Yan Press, we are committed to making urgent global conversations accessible to Thai readers. Over the years, we have translated more than 50 books spanning politics, philosophy, civil disobedience, feminism, social movements, animal ethics, environmental justice, and AI ethics. We believe knowledge fuels change. By bringing these ideas into Thai, we equip readers with intellectual tools to engage the defining questions of our time.
Selected books
The Burnout Society
Where the Divine Faces Eviction
Beauty: A Very Short Introduction
How to Take Smart Notes
Rebel Cities
Out of the Wreckage
The Buddhist and the Ethicist
Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship
Men Explain Things to Me
On Tyranny
China’s Influence and the Center-Periphery Tug of War in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific
From Dictatorship to Democracy
WHO WE ARE TRANSLATING
Featured authors
Our books bring Thai readers into conversation with important thinkers from around the world
Erik Olin Wright
Peter Singer
Martin Luther
King Jr.
Hannah Arendt
Gene Sharp
Rebecca Solnit
What we do
We publish books in translation, support original Thai writing, and connect ideas to the realities of public life. Our work engages questions of democracy, dissent, memory, ethics, community, gender, the environment, and justice.
We believe independent publishing is essential to a freer and more critical society.
Why our work matters
In many places, the space for free thought is shrinking. Independent publishers face pressure not only through censorship, but also through fear, stigma, economic constraint, and political intimidation.
Sam Yan Press continues to publish because the freedom to read, write, translate, and remember is essential to any democratic future.
We are a small press. But small presses often carry the ideas that larger institutions are unwilling to defend.
Human Rights Defenders of the World, Unite
Sam Yan Press stands with writers, translators, publishers, students, artists, and communities who continue to speak, remember, and organize under pressure.
We believe the freedom to publish is inseparable from the freedom to think, to dissent, and to defend human dignity. Across borders, those who protect truth and conscience face censorship, intimidation, surveillance, imprisonment, and erasure. Their struggles are different, but they are connected.
Our work in Thailand is part of this wider landscape of courage. Through publishing, translation, and public memory, we seek to help build a world in which truth can still be spoken, history can still be preserved, and conscience can still find a public voice.
Independent publishing is one of the living forms of human rights work.
Our publishing themes
Freedom & Democracy
Feminism & LGBTQ+ Life
Community, Heritage, & Urban Justice
Ethics, Animals, Environment, & Technology
“We believe free thought must be translated, printed, and placed in the hands of ordinary readers.”
ABOUT US
About Sam Yan Press
Founded in Bangkok, Sam Yan Press is an independent press committed to intellectual freedom and social courage. We publish for readers who want not only to understand the world, but to change it.
Our books and projects emerge from the belief that publishing can protect memory, challenge conformity, and keep public thought alive.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT US
Samnak Nisit Sam Yan Press offers to youngsters of Thai a lesson on how to confront authoritarian oppression under hard-line policy of the regime.
Samnak Nisit Sam Yan Press offers to readers of Thai a treasure some of the best works in today’s world on freedom, social justice, and democracy.
Stand with independent publishing
Support our work, explore our books, or get in touch to collaborate.