The coming months see a welcome influx of trans voices to the fiction shelves, and authors are quick to point out that those voices aren’t speaking in unison. “There are as many trans experiences as there are trans people,” says Robyn Gigl, author of Remain Silent (Kensington, May). “We’re human beings like anyone else, with all the same vulnerabilities and hopes. Real-life trans issues are woven into my stories, but they’re just part of the characters’ world like the rest of the plot.” Forthcoming novels by transgender authors bring new viewpoints to a variety of genres, from a tender coming-of-age tale to surrealist horror and beyond.
Reality bites
In Remain Silent, Gigl’s third legal thriller starring transgender lawyer Erin McCabe, the criminal defense attorney is caught between two cases that intersect with gender identity: in one, a client is charged with abducting her transgender daughter, and in the other, McCabe herself is the prime suspect in the murder of a financial advisor who’d revealed his gender identity to her.
“There are aspects of trans characters’ lives that present unique legal issues in the real world,” Gigl says. “When I transpose them into a fictional setting, it’s scary not just because the characters are stuck in situations they have to get out of, but because it’s based on things in real life.”
OKPsyche (Small Beer, Sept.), Anya Johanna DeNiro’s follow-up to what PW’s review called the “surreal and lyrical” 2020 novella City of a Thousand Feelings, looks at the sometimes harrowing reality of being a transgender person in a modern social setting. In a surrealistic narrative centered on an unnamed protagonist, aspects of many trans people’s lived experiences—gender dysphoria, the collapse of familial relations, societal alienation—manifest as magical hallucinations that alter reality.
“Surrealism is a way to leapfrog over a cisgender audience’s expectations of narrative based around trans pain,” DeNiro says. “When very strange things pop up, in many ways, it’s no stranger than lots of things that happened during my transition. I wanted to talk about very mundane moments—a character appraising her wig or being hyperfixated on how she’s perceived by other people—through a surrealistic lens. The intersection of the political landscape and the psychological is very rich territory.”
It’s complicated
As more trans characters claim the spotlight, they’re also finding the latitude to be as emotionally complex as their cisgender fictional counterparts. In Eliot Duncan’s debut novel, Ponyboy (Norton, June), a transmasculine writer struggles with addiction, codependence, and alienation while negotiating a dysfunctional love triangle with Baby, a lesbian painter, and Toni, a childhood friend. As Ponyboy’s mental health crumbles and his substance use problems become impossible to ignore, his relationships follow suit: he reaches for connection even as he tears down his support network and self-destructs.
The story is about the ways in which the process of discovering one’s true self can lead to the “fissures and ruptures between people and relationships,” Duncan says. “Being complicated and messed-up is part of the human experience, and it feels important to create characters who are reflective of my own lived experience. The relationships and problems that Ponyboy has are interesting, but they’re not necessarily interesting because he’s trans. It’s not a spectacle—addiction recovery, for example, is a complicated and monotonous process for anyone, regardless of gender. Bad things can happen, and it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Alison Rumfitt debuted in 2022 with Tell Me I’m Worthless, a “triumph of transgressive queer horror,” per PW’s starred review. Her follow-up, Brainwyrms (Nightfire, Oct.), wraps the political and the personal in a body horror package. When trans protagonist Frankie’s workplace is bombed by a transphobic terrorist and an exploitative media circus ensues, she turns to a variety of coping mechanisms, including substance use and anonymous sex. Things get even worse when she begins what Rumfitt calls a “completely destructive relationship” with the enigmatic Vanya, which allows her to explore a uniquely terrible version of herself.
“I’m interested in toxic dynamics between my characters,” Rumfitt says. “Frankie is a nasty person, but she’s also the audience’s POV character for the majority of the novel, and readers can experience her perspective without necessarily being expected to condone or identify with it. It was great to write a character who surprised me with worse and worse things as the story progressed.”
Brainwyrms builds on the sharp political subtext of Tell Me I’m Worthless, placing the story into darker and pulpier territory and making its themes more explicit. “I enjoy hitting people in the head with a sledgehammer, to some extent,” Rumfitt adds. “It’s fun, from a novel-writing perspective, to be crushingly on-the-nose sometimes.”
From a certain point of view
Nicola Dinan’s Bellies (Hanover Square, Aug.) follows Tom and Ming, who become college sweethearts after attending drag night at university and forming an instant bond. When the two move to London after graduation, Ming declares her intention to begin gender transition, introducing a new dynamic as they navigate post-college life as individuals and as a couple. Dinan switches narrative points of view between Tom and Ming, giving the reader a multifaceted perspective on Ming’s transition process.
“I wanted to write the story of someone’s transition through the lens of relationships,” Dinan says. “What does it mean to be on the outside of someone else’s change? So much about how we present ourselves, and how we think of ourselves as people, has an inherent relation to gender. It felt necessary to offer both Tom’s and Ming’s perspectives and craft two voices that sound distinct and have different mindsets, even though they share so much between them.”
Dinan, like other authors interviewed for this piece, believes in the importance of multiple perspectives in telling a fuller and more nuanced story.
“It would have been more difficult to write the book from only one point of view, because I never would have gotten the full story that way.”
