Topside Press

The Collection: Installment Three

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:28:17 -0400

   When The Collection, Tom Leger and Riley MacLeod’s anthology of trans fiction, was published last fall, I blogged it, writing brief descriptions of each story as I read it and posting them on Facebook. Now I’m reprinting them here, more or less as they originally appear, though revised and sometimes expanded.

    Sophie, in Casey Plett’s “Other Women,” moved away from Winnipeg to transition; now she’s home for Christmas, facing her family, her high school crowd, and her best friend, Megan. The story is full of uncomfortable moments: her mother’s awkwardness around her; the tension when Mom and Sophie visit her Mennonite grandparents, who are polite but don’t accept the change: her grandfather uses her old name when saying grace over dinner and her grandmother leaves a biblical note in her pocket. Other family members find an excuse to stay away, and her twelve-year-old cousin wishes Sophie’s male self was back. Sophie doesn’t know how to act. At church, she hides in the car as soon as the sermon ends. Things seem better with Megan. Megan knew Sophie was trans in high school and they bond easily as old friends, but even that goes wrong when, on Sophie’s last night there, they have drunken sex and it turns out Megan doesn’t really accept Sophie as a woman either. Sophie ends up seducing Megan’s roommate, Mark, awkwardly exploring a new role — a female role — with someone who isn’t from her past.

    In “Greenhorn,” by K Tait Jarboe, the genderqueer Olivia, bright, overweight, and self-conscious, is on leave from college to deal with their psychological issues. Along with “generalized disastrous personality” and awful sexual experiences with both genders, Olivia frequently slips into another dimension, one with a Western theme, where Patsy Cline and Jesse James are living “ghosts,” concrete myths projected from the collective consciousness. They get in touch with their high school gaming clique at the local comic book shop, three guys who are even geekier than Olivia is. The guys aren’t terribly appropriate, but no worse than when Olivia was the girl of the group. One member, Nathan, takes them to the home of his wealthy and powerful parents for a gaming marathon. They all get drunk on coconut rum and pass out, and when Olivia comes to the next morning, they’ve been raped. Olivia’s reactions are messy and uncertain, but Jesse James, who has become their otherworldly mentor, gives them a magical amulet that becomes a source of strength. In one scene, Olivia is reading a Preacher comic, and I could easily imagine this story as a Vertigo comic.

                                                                  — A.K. Blue

As of this summer, Bryn will be the first (and only?) trans...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:31:00 -0400

As of this summer, Bryn will be the first (and only?) trans woman to attend the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers Retreat. She was awarded a $1000 scholarship, but still needs to raise the final $650 to pay the tuition to this queer writers’ boot camp.

According to Bryn, she’ll be there “working on a collection of essays about living in Brooklyn, growing up in Appalachia, religion, trans stuff, and organizing queers in these later years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”

If you can donate (even $5-10) to support trans women’s writing, the community can get her there this summer. Topside Press has donated the first $50.

DONATE HERE VIA CREDIT/DEBIT CARD

feminist killjoy: i am really grumpy at topside press right now, because i bought an...

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:22:35 -0400

feminist killjoy: i am really grumpy at topside press right now, because i bought an...:

sukoon:

i am really grumpy at topside press right now, because i bought an ebook copy of nevada by imogen binnie and can’t access it. when i try to access my copy, it takes me to a page that says:

Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access…

Hey there, can you send me an email at tom@topsidepress.com and I’ll fix it right away—sorry about that!

queerbookclub: Queer books out in April 2013. Know any...

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:53:22 -0400

queerbookclub:

Queer books out in April 2013. Know any others?

[Image description: Nine books covers, including Nevada by Imogen Binnie, My New Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein, Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris, The End of San Fransisco by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir by Amber Dawn, Rapture Practice by Aarson Hartzler, Obscenely Yours by Angelo Nikolopoulos, Stuck In The Middle With You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan, and Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk From the Middle East to the Lower East Side by Rayya Elias.]

The Collection: Installment Two

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:32:19 -0400

getyourak:

   When The Collection, Tom Leger and Riley MacLeod’s anthology of trans fiction, was published last fall, I blogged it, writing brief descriptions of each story as I read it and posting them on Facebook. Now I’m reprinting them here, more or less as they originally appear, though revised and sometimes expanded.

    “The Cafe” by R. Drew is about Sam, a trans man, and his workday in a coffee shop. Though the story is in the third person, it is told from Sam’s point of view, humorous and observant, providing relief for the reader if not Sam. He has worked out a whole taxonomy of customer types, and a timetable for their appearance. He has nicknames for regular customers, and especially for his horrible co-worker, the Louse. The awfulness of the Louse grows until it fills the universe. The only relief is Linc, a crush-worthy film student, and his posse of queer and trans friends, whom Sam would like to connect with but can’t. Throughout the day, Sam is misgendered by customers and especially the Louse. Gradually Sam is erased, until he is a “ghost.” This will have a special meaning for trans readers, who have experienced the frightening, almost physiological disembodiment produced by misgendering. Fortunately, Sam’s day ends happily.

    “Black Holes” by R.J. Edwards is a smooth, elliptical story that crosscuts between two couples. Kant and Joey met at a transmasculine group, though Joey uses gender-neutral pronouns. Joey, a whimsical, poetry-writing free spirit, is obsessed with the immanent launch of the Large Hadron Collider, which ze fears will consume the world in a black hole. Yet Joey’s fears are tinged with hope, with the idea that a black hole might be a doorway to another, better reality; at one point ze even sees what looks like rips in the fabric of reality. Zer lover Kant is more conventional; his turn-on is bursting balloons. The other couple are two straight, cis scientists working on the LHC. Jean-Michel, married, is attracted to Benedicta, who is disturbed by hate mail that might be from Joey. Benedicta has her own cosmological obsession: that when the universe contracts it will explode again, in an eternal cycle, so that every possible version of events will play out and eventually the present will repeat exactly. It is a story about things that don’t happen: the scientists don’t have an affair, the LHC doesn’t end the world, and Joey presents Kant with an ultimatum about letting zer move in that isn’t met.

                                                                  — A.K. Blue

The Collection: Installment One

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:31:58 -0400

getyourak:

    When The Collection, Tom Leger and Riley MacLeod’s anthology of trans fiction, was published last fall, I blogged it, writing brief descriptions of each story as I read it and posting them on Facebook. Now I’m reprinting them here, more or less as they originally appeared — though revised and, as in this first installment, sometimes expanded.

    The first story, Imogen Binnie’s “I Met a Girl Named Bat Who Met Jeffrey Palmer” is narrated by a nameless trans woman in the near future. She is fascinated by our era and one of its most original thinkers, Jeffrey Palmer. She is excited to find someone who met Palmer once, Bat, a trans woman from our era, but when they meet, she is disillusioned. I’ve written about this story elsewhere, but in the wake of Binnie’s novel, Nevada, it becomes much clearer. Binnie writes incisively, fearlessly about the psychic damage that growing up trans does to women. Bat is damaged, archetypically so. Jeffrey Palmer is damaged too, in his own way. The narrator, a proto-Maria Griffiths, is damaged but tries to heal herself with Palmer’s webcam meditations. She has found a way out.

    The next story is “Saving” by Carter Sickles. Dean, a trans man who lives in New York, returns home to Kentucky. Previously he had put his senile grandmother, his only living relative, into a nursing home; now he must decide what to do with her house, the place where he grew up, his parents having died when he was young. This time he’s brought along his cis girlfriend, Jillian, a native of the New York City area and a maker of arty documentaries that Dean doesn’t understand. Jillian is filming the trip, and their relationship is troubled, distant. Dean’s grandmother doesn’t know who he is, the couple is visited constantly by a neighbor, Paul, an older, bitterly divorced man who ogles Jillian and tries to bond with Dean, and, as Jillian’s camera runs, Dean is faced with his past: the dislocations of a transgender childhood and a legacy of violence against women by both his father and grandfather. He no longer fits in, if he ever did, which is perhaps especially painful for a Southerner. The writing is quietly literary, clear and well-observed but opaque, very much show-don’t-tell, and Dean is somewhat opaque himself, inarticulate and seemingly unreflective and cut off from his emotions.

    That isn’t the case in the third story, “To the New World” by Ryka Aoki. Millie Wong broadcasts her thoughts and feelings; she has italicized thought balloons, like a character in a Dune novel. Millie is an Asian trans woman in L.A., and today she is commemorating her dead Vietnamese grandmother by going to the farmer’s market to get something fitting to eat. Can my delight in this story be separated from my being a trans woman who sees herself in Millie? In the little politically-incorrect pleasures she takes in being a woman, such as having doors held open for her. In her being afraid to come out to her parents. In the unsureness and loneliness behind her tolerance of the lesbian friend, Sierra, she meets at the market, who spouts womyn-made-womyn transphobia and lazy, stereotyped thinking about Asians and who, in her role as vegan moralist, prevents Millie from buying the roll that she wants, her grandmother’s favorite kind. Would I have felt this way about “Saving” and not “To the New World” if I was a trans man? If I was cis, would I have been merely appreciative of both stories? A lesbian reviewer described this story as “painful,” but, at a safe distance from Sierra, I found her obtuseness to be rather endearing; the timid Millie finds genuine inspiration in her strength. Back at home, Millie’s celebration with her grandmother’s photo saved by a pork bun found in the freezer, she appreciates all the friends she’s made as a woman, and compares her transition to her grandmother’s flight from Vietnam to America. She is exhilarated by the fresh new life that so alienates Dean but, though Millie’s attitude is happier, there is a lot of truth in both perspectives.

                                                                             — A.K. Blue

Question of the week

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:26:56 -0400

If you were designing a writers retreat for transgender authors, what would it look like? Who would be there? What would make you want to attend? What would make it possible for you to attend?

Celebration of Bisexual Writing! June 2, 2013 at 6:30pm at...

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:47:57 -0400

Celebration of Bisexual Writing!
June 2, 2013 at 6:30pm at NYC’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe!

xcedarxsmoke: distractinteract: cedarxsmoke: I went to the...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:56:58 -0400

xcedarxsmoke:

distractinteract:

cedarxsmoke:

I went to the montreal book launch of Nevada by Imogen Binnie last night at cagibi, and it was amazing.

“Nevada is the darkly comedic story of Maria Griffiths, a young trans woman living in New York City who is trying to stay true to her punk values while working retail. When she finds out her girlfriend has lied to her, the world she thought she’d carefully built for herself begins to unravel, and Maria sets out on a journey that will most certainly change her forever.”

You can get more info on & order the book at Topside Press and
read the first three chapters online or in pdf !

where can i get this in toronto?

Ahh just missed her! She recently went through on her book tour on April 24th - and I think the tour has been the main non-internet way for people to get her book so far. Aside from that, I think it’s only online at Topside for now.

Nevada is available at the Topside Bookstore, and also on Amazon.com and other websites, of course. Any local bookstore can order it for you if they don’t already have it in stock.

5/7 Update: Trans* Women At Smith

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:55:29 -0400

smith-q-and-a:

For people who want updates about trans* women at Smith, major developments have happened in recent meetings with the administration and admissions. Here they are:

-Smith admissions will accept alternative documentation to confirm gender identity if there are inconsistent or non-female gender markers on admissions materials. It is still indeterminate what kind of language will be used on the website in the implementation of this change.

-Smith admissions will not consider financial aid/FAFSA documents when evaluating an applicant for consistent gender markers

-Smith will allow Q&A to create a “best practices” protocol for admissions employees to use when interacting with or advising trans applicants

-Further meetings with other administrators will discuss inclusion of information specific to trans women’s issues/transmisogyny during diversity trainings, use of preferred name in Smith documents and directories, and reporting/oversight on implementation of demands

-Smith can’t publish statistics about number of trans women applicants and acceptance ratios for confidentiality reasons, but might be able to direct trans women applicants to student organizers who can help oversee the process

-Student organizers and administrative officials will form a committee that will meet, ideally, 3 times a semester to talk about trans women’s inclusion at Smith college which will be co-facilitated by the student RCSG Coordinator (Q&A’s Emily Coffin) and Audrey Smith (Dean of Admissions)

Published by Smith Q&A

smith-q-and-a.tumblr.com

fb: Smith Q&A

q_and_a-admin@lists.riseup.net

"I don’t want the priority reading audience for our books to be non-queers. I don’t want them to be..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 14:23:38 -0400

““I don’t want the priority reading audience for our books to be non-queers. I don’t want them to be palatable to straight and cisgendered people. I don’t want publishers to have their cake and eat it too: slyly de-queer the book to appeal to cis/straight audiences and assume LGBTQ folks will figure it out and buy the book too. As Imogen Binnie unabashedly proclaimed at a recent reading in Vancouver from her new novel Nevada, which features a trans woman protagonist: “I don’t care if straight people read it.” I understand that literature is a very powerful activist tool and that non-queers reading about queers is a great thing. I can see that by not proclaiming their queer content on the cover that some books are going to gain readership they might not otherwise and that this reading experience might be transformative for said non-queer people and could positively impact their interactions with queers in the future. But that’s not as important to me as a queer person who needs queer literature finding and reading it.””

- Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian, “Why I Don’t Want to Be a Queer Book Detective Anymore (Although I Do Still Want to Be Harriet the Spy)”

Apropos of the conversation the other day between HBBO and Shayvaalski about representation and writing marginalized characters for a privileged audience.

Also, I’ve seen Binnie’s name being thrown around like confetti almost daily for the last month. I’m special-ordering her novel right now for the library.

(via peninsulamamoenam)

WELL SAID.

In addition.

One thing I’ve learned from my love affair with Modernism, is that there is power in insisting that your art be taken on its own terms. Most of my favorite novels had, as one of their explicit goals, the creation of a new way to use language in the new (post-WWI) world. And they did not apologize for that. The old tools were broken, and they took seriously the need to create new ones that worked for themselves and their experience, without reference to whether it worked for their parents, or Arnold Bennett, or Mrs. Humphrey Ward down at the Times Literary Supplement. It was vital to them that they create art that matched their experience and their internal vision. So they created it.

I’m sure not saying that’s the only way to write or the only way to take your writing seriously. But I think in modern American culture “taking yourself seriously as a writer” has come to be synonymous with “writing something that will sell to the mainstream.” If you’re not doing that you’re viewed as pompous, or a dilettante. But commercial viability is not the only portion of art-making that can be taken seriously. Not by a long shot.

I keep thinking about the rise of the Christian Right, in the 80s. A relatively small group of people within the US Republican party made HUGE political inroads in the country at large, as well as moving their own party dramatically to the right, within an alarmingly short period of time. They did it, in large part, by aiming high and insisting on defining their own terms. I mean, I disagree with these people on just about everything, but you’ve got to hand it to them: the term “pro-life” is a brilliant piece of propaganda; it’s one that had the left playing catch-up for DECADES, while abortion rights were rapidly eroded all over the country. And if you’re constantly on defense rather than offense in this kind of battle, you can only ever hope to break even, never ahead.

I don’t want queer people to be in the same position vis-a-vis literature, as the left has been to the abortion debate. I don’t want us to be constantly begging at the door of the mainstream for acceptance and understanding. I want a queer literary culture so rich and deep, so vividly-realized, so true to the lived experience of queer humans—be that of fluid gender; of diverse attraction; of diverse practice; of sex as an integral and messy part of human experience; of relationships darker and brighter and more complicated than normative happy-ever-afters—that its importance in the larger literary fabric becomes, on its own terms, undeniable.

(via havingbeenbreathedout)

Hey Blue look, SUPPORT FOR YOUR THEORY OF WRITING.

(via shayvaalski)

boredangry: rememberwhenyoutried: I just bought this book and...

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:00:37 -0400

boredangry:

rememberwhenyoutried:

I just bought this book and everyone took pictures of themselves holding it up and looking happy, but because I have terrible wrists and can’t hold a paperback up long enough to read it I bought the kindle version to read on my ipod so, uh, here’s a screenshot from inside the kindle app and there are pictures of me on my tumblr somewhere; good luck finding one where I look more than reasonably amused, though.

Super excited to read this!

yessss

The Lambda Literary Foundation book club will be reading NEVADA...

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:28:59 -0400

The Lambda Literary Foundation book club will be reading NEVADA in May! Participate on their website and download the reading guide there, too!

odofemi: Me, Imogen Binnie, Trish Salah, and Kiley May during...

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:12:06 -0400

odofemi:

Me, Imogen Binnie, Trish Salah, and Kiley May during the panel discussion tonight. Photo by S. Bear Bergman.

Get Trish Salah’s Wanting in Arabic in paperback for $16.95 at Amazon!

Get Nevada, a novel by Imogen Binnie at the Topside Bookstore!

FREAK OF NURTURE by Kelli Dunham now available for pre-order...

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:02:11 -0400

FREAK OF NURTURE by Kelli Dunham now available for pre-order from the Topside Bookstore

Just $14.95!

odofemi: Trish Salah reading her poetry during Imogen Binnie’s...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:40:54 -0400

odofemi:

Trish Salah reading her poetry during Imogen Binnie’s Nevada Book Launch at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, April 24th 2013.

Trish Salah is a total genius, trans lady poet who basically invented trans poetry, so y’all need to listen and learn to this amazing trans woman of colour. I still am in awe of the fact that I got her to perform at this event!

housingworksbookstore: emilybooks: If you’re in NYC on May...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:51:07 -0400

housingworksbookstore:

emilybooks:

If you’re in NYC on May 13, come celebrate Sarah Schulman’s novel Empathy, our April book club pick, with the author and Barbara Browning, who’s also the author of two Emily Books picks. We’re also thrilled to be cohosting the event with literary event crowdfunding resource Togather, which is buying everyone’s first drink (Thanks, Togather!)

By posing a big, unanswerable question we hope to spark a conversation that will leave everyone with more questions. We’re also excited to host a conversation between two novelists who, in very different ways, dazzle and tantalize readers and provoke lingering thoughts about identity.

We hope to see you there, and if you can’t make it, we’ll catch you up afterwards right here!

Super-excited about this, mark it on your calendar in PEN.

Tom Léger from Topside Press will be moderating this! Come!

The best reviews always come from prisoners. Get a larger copy...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:41:00 -0400

The best reviews always come from prisoners.

Get a larger copy of the letter here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4042515/james%20diaz%20letter%20review%20.jpg

boredangry: anxiety—-cloak: I haven’t been as much of an avid...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:27:45 -0400

boredangry:

anxiety—-cloak:

I haven’t been as much of an avid reader in the past couple years but my copy of “nevada” by imogen binnie came in the mail toward the end of last week & although I am only part way through, I am honestly dreading finishing it.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had so many self realizations & recognized parallels to my story as I have while reading this novel. there are parts of me in here & there’s likely bits of you to be found too. the narrative & dialogue is both totally depressing & sadly hilarious at times, & I constantly find myself being like, “YEAH TOTALLY EXACTLY I KNOW THAT” in my head while reading.
fuck yeah, imogen binnie is a hero to me. trans woman punks make me feel like I don’t want to die & that there are others like me, we just haven’t been allowed to tell our stories.
read this novel.

oh man <3 <3

Kristen Stone

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:19:08 -0400

30xlace:

taking jasmine to anastasia island state park for her 27th birthday

i wait outside the bathroom for you at the state park.
i hang my long frame over the railing. why do we call a body a frame. i use the word without thinking. Real Women Have Curves. i have angles and ankles, nervous hands. i am outside woman and i am okay with that. there is a tension to being a dyke. not a binary tension but something else. one person has to be something else. to wait outside with the picnic. the sky is so big here near the beach, the wind pulls my dirty hair and balloons my windbreaker with the broken zipper, it makes me edgy. the blue and white. i squint and lean my foot on something and stretch absentmindedly. a weak boyfriend.

once somebody called me genderqueer
i didn’t know what they meant. i am a bad butch because i don’t take up space. i am a bad radical because i like for people to have manners. (i am a social worker, which precludes a total rejection of institutions, so i cannot be That Cool.) the tension of being a dyke is something else, not like i imagine heterosexuality. i am the boyfriend because of my short hair and pegged pants and i drive the car when we go places, but i am also the wife, i want the baby and keep the house and lie still so you can fuck me. i mean, fuck me please, with your thick hips and soft white tits and long golden hair. i comb the knots out of it, like a governess or mother. sometimes when you fuck me you wear a harness that looks like stretchy boys’ underwear, with a gaping plastic mouth to hold the cock.

once my therapist called me a lesbian.
at word, i told her. i am not a lesbian; i don’t have gay pride; i identify with shame. not gay shame but being a prude. the only person who knows what i mean by this hates me now. that’s an ugly loneliness.

you come out of the bathroom and i go in.
there should be a separation between couples and maybe it has to do with the bathroom, maybe it has to do with tasks, doors, fluids. bodies at their least cute. the bathroom is damp and loud because there’s a hand dryer. i hate hand dryers and wipe the water off on my pants.

point
i feel outside woman in a metaphysical, melancholy way. i’m not sure if it’s about femininity or the phallus or what. maybe it’s linguistic or psychoanalytic and all women feel this way. i don’t think it’s interesting or relevant or has anything much to do with patriarchy or oppression. some people will read this and contest my feeling outside woman altogether because so many people are further outside woman but all i can say is this essay is not about that.

this essay is about taking jasmine to the state park on her 27th birthday
which means it’s about the cultural creation of picnics. i like picnics and my father hates them because they are a lot of work. my father is a True Capitalist. i like that it is non-rational to pack up your food and dishes, take them somewhere, eat at a hard picnic table in the wind or sun, and then take it all back home. i have faith in things that are clumsy and must defend themselves. i have faith in things that are non-rational.

counterpoint
i say all this then i think the picnic, like the pastoral, relies on industrialization while setting itself in opposition to it. you have to make people stay inside all the time for a picnic to make sense, really. so a picnic relies on capitalism even as it seems outside it. we talk around these things lazily, as we squint in the sun and follow the boardwalk over the dunes. sounding uselessly smart is a thing we do without really noticing, like scratching at dandruff or getting up in the night to pee.

we sit on the cold bright sand for awhile and kiss.
in florida you’re not supposed to go in the dunes because of erosion; in michigan you can. this has caused some tension in our relationship, your trying to climb these dunes, here. here, the beach is falling into itself like a toothless mouth. we have hurricanes and the high-rises could fall into the sea. you might step in a hidden clutch of soft turtle eggs. in michigan the dunes are soft white mountains, and in winter the lake-waves freeze into giant boulders on shore.

i need to stop writing about michigan or this essay will never end.

we walk back up the beach, and over the boardwalk, we put the rest of the picnic into my car, we climb a lighthouse, we drive home.

***

Kristen’s recommendation:

Nevada by Imogen Binnie is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, or ever. Maria, Imogen Binnie’s narrator, is a punk trans lady who moved from a small town (Cow Town I think she calls it) to new york city, where she dissociates in and out of her own life. she talks about how her memory does and doesn’t work, she talks about her body, she borrow/steals her ex-girlfriend’s car and goes in a road trip. There’s been a lot of talk in the last year or so about the girl, the girl on the internet, and sometimes that’s been limiting/limited to a certain kind of girl, which sucks because there are so many girls and girl-stories that are not being represented. i have a giant crush on maria and she is a heartbreaking narrator: unreliable, flippant, casual, funny, devastating, fragile and tough and untouchable. she’s like that cool junior you met the first week of high school. this book feels like that crush, a bruise-y aching feeling.

Visit Kristen online