F131.
Transfigured Flesh: Shapeshifting, Embodiment and the Nonhuman in Trans Narratives
Friday, February 9, 2024
9:00 am to 10:15 am
Trans writers have long been aware of the power of the animal, the nonhuman and the monstrous—whether jinn or mycelium—not only as metaphors but as kin. This panel brings together four trans authors whose genre-bending work interrogates the boundaries between human and nonhuman to resist the narratives that would erase those who live in their margins. We will discuss the craft of writing about embodiment and what can only be revealed by dissolving the boundary with the more-than-human world.
Participants
Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of The Map of Salt and Stars and Stonewall and Lambda Literary award-winning The Thirty Names of Night. His work appears in Salon, the Paris Review, Kink, This Arab Is Queer, and elsewhere. He is a Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) board member and Periplus mentor.
Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List, their debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts was shortlisted for a Lambda, a Hurston/Wright, and Tiptree Award. The Deep, their second book, was published in 2019.
Bishakh Som is an Indian-American trans femme visual artist. Her graphic novel Apsara Engine (The Feminist Press) was the winner of a 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Comic. Her graphic memoir Spellbound (Street Noise Books) is also a Lambda finalist.
Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, is the recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers, and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.
