Variations (Influx Press, 2021)
Variations is a collection of 11 short stories that tell a potted history of trans and non-binary people in the United Kingdom from the Victorian period to the present. It features a variety of different characters in different times and places, ranging from London during the Oscar Wilde trial to austerity-era Belfast, via inter-war Cardiff, a drag bar in Liverpool after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the protest against Clause 28 in Manchester in 1988 and beyond. Using a variety of forms – diary entries and letters, newspaper and magazine articles, invented short stories, memoir chapters and oral histories, blog posts and a film script – it was published in June 2021, and can be ordered through the Influx Press website.
You can read an extract from the sixth story, ‘The Forgotten Stars of The White Swan’ in VICE, and from the second, ‘A Wo/Man of No Importance’, at the London Review Bookshop blog. You can also watch a video of me reading ‘A Wo/Man of No Importance’ via Studio Voltaire. I also wrote about the process behind Variations for Granta‘s ‘Notes on Craft’ series, and in an article entitled ‘New Fronts, Old Wars‘ in the summer 2021 issue of Tribune.
Podcasts, radio programmes and videos:
Culture Sex Relationships (with Justin Hancock)
Instagram Live (with Huw Lemmey)
Isolation Station (with So Mayer)
Little Atoms (with Neil Denny)
Novara Media: Downstream (with Ash Sarkar)
Out in South London (with Sophia Blackwell)
Politics Theory Other (with Alex Doherty)
Suite (212) (with Tom Overton)
Trashfuture (with Riley Quinn and others)
Interviews:
The Quietus (with Enrico Monacelli)
Reviews:
3:AM (by Susana Medina)
Club des Femmes (by Anna Walsh)
Elephant (by Bryony White)
Flash Art (by Manuela Pacella – Italian)
Frieze (by So Mayer)
New Humanist (by Agata Pyzik)
The Observer (by Hephzibah Anderson)
The Scotsman (by Laura Waddell)