For Trans Awareness Week, November 13-19, I’m sharing some of my very favorite podcast episodes, by and about trans people. Listening to the voices and experiences of other trans people helps me understand myself and my community. I’m grateful these folks share such meaningful stories from their experience. I hope you enjoy these episodes! Gender
“If you need anything from your clients before January, now is the time,” an executive at the marketing agency I used to work at informed us in early November. These successful people who pay us money are now arranging their travel, planning family gatherings, buying presents, researching recipes, taking extra naps, spending time with their
Pitching is a simple exercise — asking an editor if they’d like to commission your work — but it can be incredibly nerve-racking. I learn well from templates, so I’ll include a rough outline in this post, but first, a couple guidelines. Editors are real people, who receive more emails for their job than you
I have multiple voices. The one I like best, so far, is the deeper, smiling, confident voice I use to teach aikido and talk when I feel comfortable. The one I hate most is the “can you help me, a scared little girl,” voice that comes out when I have to ask for customer service
Many folks assume that people in my communities refer to me as “they” instead of “he” or “she” and that I go on a correcting rampage if someone gets it wrong. I almost never correct people, actually. Why? I defend other people’s pronouns much more strongly. I’ll interject, “they,” “she,” or “he,” as corrections into
The Byline Bible: Get Published in 5 Weeks, by Susan Shapiro, gets straight to the point. If you want to be published fast, you need a timely, short essay about (ideally) your most humiliating moment. Shapiro shares her extensive expertise working with newspaper and magazine editors and provides insight into what they are looking for,
I grew up with everyone using she/her pronouns for me. In my mid-twenties, a nonbinary friend listened when I said I didn’t feel like a woman and started using they/them pronouns for me experimentally. It felt right, better than “she” or “her.” I have never felt like a girl, even though I didn’t know about
This week, I switched how I track my writing submissions from Duotrope to Airtable and I love it so far. Duotrope is a paid website sharing statistics on literary magazine and publisher submissions. It helps you track where you have submitted. I’ve had a Duotrope subscription for about six months and found it valuable for
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender is a delightfully queer YA love story. It starts off a little corny (I mean, the main character’s name is Felix Love) and devolves into cruel deceptions at first. But then it dives deep into questions of gender identity, friendship, and love. This book shows an incredible depth of
