Seasons in Transition

What do climate and gender have to do with one another?

Over the winter a new tag appeared near my place of work. SEASONAL spray painted in the parking lot. SEASONAL splashed across the shoe billboard. SEASONAL dripping from the overpass. SEASONAL on the backs of street signs. Some have been painted over, but this one remains right next to my parking space, faded by spring rains, but still here.

Sometimes I set out to write from a place of deep conviction and with an idea I want to convey; other times, it’s only when I’m writing and rewriting and editing a piece that I’ll actually stumble on a phrase or a sentence that brings my thoughts into clearer perspective. This was the case with a forthcoming essay I’ve been working on for a long time with an editor I deeply admire, and I find I’ve been continually replaying a few sentences in my head:

“I write about climate change and transition in the same breath because they are the two changes that have shaped my life in almost every way. I think of them as part of the same process. Each thing — gender, climate — have historically required a knowledge of what came before in order to define their characteristics, whether that was biological sex or weather patterns. But these a priori categories can no longer be relied upon thanks to changing social and environmental climates. [...] Some have seized upon this moment to forecast continued doom: the Deep Adaptation movement urges humanity to prepare for the coming precarity and climate wars, while new anti-trans laws are passed daily. Such fear-mongering would have us believe that the breaking down of old categories spells doom for the human race, rather than a chance at rewriting past wrongs.”

There’s more to say, but I’ll save it for the essay. I can, however, share what I’ve been up to recently. I wrote about David Wojnarowicz and what it means to be safe in art and science for Orion. Next week I’ll be talking with fellow Kink authors Larissa Pham and Vanessa Clark, and editor R.O. Kwon for the Get Lit! Festival (and on the topic of Kink, Ilana Masad recently interviewed me and wrote a beautiful review of the book for Xtra Magazine). smoke and mold, the literary journal I run that publishes nature writing, broadly defined, by trans and Two-Spirit writers, recently brought on three new assistant editors and published a double issue on April 1. I’m kind of tired? But as the book pub date is on the horizon, more readings and events are in the works.

Thank you everyone who’s continued reading this newsletter and my work, and who emails me in response, even when I don’t always write back. I love hearing from you who are also engaged in thinking about the weather that day, your own path through the world; it makes my day.

What I’m Reading

This weekend I tore through the graphic novel Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and illustrated by Ann Xu. It’s the story of Kumiko, who flees the nursing home where her well-intentioned daughters left her because she feels the tug of death at the corners of her vision and she just wants to do a little more living first. It’s funny, surprisingly queer, lingers over the mundane in all the right places, and then gets super weird in all the best ways. Kumiko fights death with a vacuum cleaner. You should read it!

And, while not a book, I loved this article for its movement toward a brighter future and a jettisoning of ‘climate grief’ (because who does that grief really serve, anyhow?) from Knar Gavin over at annulet poetics: “No Good Grief: Ecstatic Counter-Mapping”. Hopefully it one day becomes a book. 

Publishing Opportunities

Uncanny Magazine is open to submissions of novellas up to 40,000 words. Deadline April 30.

Just Femme and Dandy is seeking submissions on skin care, fashion, beauty, DIY and more from BIPOC queer and trans writers. They’re also seeking readers. 

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My book A Natural History of Transition, is available to preorder through Metonymy Press.

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