Welcome to the Public Universal Reader!
Would I get sued for calling this Shelf Androgynous? let's not find out.
Welcome to the Public Universal Reader, a new newsletter about modern trans literature! This project was born out of my work as a bookseller at a major indie store in Seattle committing light time theft to read every little bit of trans lit I could get my hands on. There is a flood of smart, funny, weird trans books being unleashed on our shelves, but the only way I could find them was through manually receiving hundreds of books every monday, a highly curated twitter feed, and behemoth “roundup” lists without much of a quality filter. So here I am, sniffing them out and telling you, faithful reader, what’s worth picking up.
Before we start, some housekeeping, as they say. Firstly, this column owes a debt to many, many smarter trans writers and readers who have come before me. In particular, I want to acknowledge the work of Drew Gregory, whose reviews are to me the gold standard of trans writing about trans culture. Additionally, this work would be impossible, or at the very least extremely scattered and boring, without the work of community stalwarts like the late Topside Press and the current torchbearers of the trans press over at LittlePuss. Follow them, submit your work to them, all that good stuff.
My bona fides for writing this column are as follows:
has read all the books (or at least most of them)
went to liberal arts college
good at finagling advance readers copies out of publicists
just some doofy trans guy
Generally, things around here will mostly focus on literary fiction, especially small-press stuff. Sci-fi and Romance might pop in from time to time (Hi Ryka Aoki! Hi Charlie Jane Anders!) but frankly, I just don’t read them as much. Similarly, YA trans lit is its own scene that needs no help from me, and is one I have no need to revisit as a former teen book reviewer and person who was on the adolescent transgender internet of the 2010s. More power to ya, kids. I’ll be over in the pure fiction section.
There’s a lot of great stuff coming out in the next few months—including new work from Kai Cheng Thom, Aurora Mattia, and Hazel Jane Plante—and I’m so excited to have a space to talk about it all with you. If you see something that falls under the purview of this column, please don’t hesitate to send it to me! I’m always looking out, but I want to make sure to catch things that might slip through the cracks. Keep your eyes peeled for newsletters in your inbox soon on The Fifth Wound and Vivian’s Ghost, among many others. Thanks for joining me on this adventure; I’m thrilled you’re here.
xoxo,
Lou
nice.