What Samuel Johnson Can Teach Us About Separating Art from the Artist
In the fifth episode of the wonderful sitcom Rutherford Falls, Nathan and Regan help to judge people's projects in their local History Fair, and end up...
10 Hot Takes About Star Wars
It's Star Wars Day for another few hours! I know, I'm super late, and everybody else already shot a womp rat, or whatever you do to celebrate this holiday,...
Yes, You Are Trans Enough. Yes, Your Identity is Valid. No, You Shouldn't Police Other Trans People's Identities.
Lately I've been having, or witnessing, the same conversations again and again with fellow trans folk: people confess that they feel like imposters, or like...
To Survive a Year of Covid, Indie Booksellers Had To Reimagine What It Means To Be a Bookstore
Like many other booksellers, Margaret (not her real name) was forced to shut down her store a year ago. When she reopened, she mostly sold books online,...
The Horrible Endgame of the Legislative Attack on Trans Kids
Image: Ted Eytan/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 I was privileged to be able to write about the horrendous new wave of legislation that aims to punish trans kids in...
Not Having An Answer Is An Answer
Back in 2019, in the before times, I was lucky enough to be guest of honor at Wiscon, the world’s first feminist science fiction convention, alongside the...
The Paradox of Breathing While Trans
Detail of the cover of Pinned Down by Pronouns, ed. T. Amato and M. Davies I didn’t transition gracefully — executing all the steps from boy-life to girl-...
"Literature's Most Famous Transsexual" Is a Rapist
Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge There aren’t any words for how much I loathe Myra Breckinridge. I first read Gore Vidal’s novel probably 15 years ago, and...
The Alt Ending of All the Birds in the Sky (Part 1)
Japanese cover art to All the Birds in the Sky, by artist Akane Malbeni. For years, I’ve been promising to reveal ALL about the alternate ending that I...
7 Wrong Lessons That Creators Learned from Game of Thrones
This is a picture of Game of Thrones, which belongs to HBO and stuff. Hard to believe we’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of Game of Thrones’ premiere...
I Used To Stand On a Stage and Tell Lies About Famous Authors
image: Litseen Today is the one-year anniversary of the last Writers With Drinks, which happened on Feb. 8, 2020. (Writers With Drinks is a live spoken word...
The Hottest New Trend in Brazilian Speculative Fiction
Sertãopunk book cover art by Jorge Ribas One thing I love about science fiction and fantasy is that we’re always adding new subgenres to the mix, as writers...
I wrote a book that I hope nobody reads
Lately, I keep having the same conversation with other trans artists and activists who were around in the early 2000s. I always tell them that their work...
Lupin Has One Huge Advantage Over Superman
Netflix’s Lupin Arsène Lupin, the famous French gentleman burglar, is having a moment right now. There’s a hit Netflix series, featuring a dazzling...
Discovery Has Become the Queer Star Trek I Always Wanted
Sometimes I wonder about the alternate reality where Star Trek introduced its first openly LGBTQ+ characters in 1987. This definitely could have happened....
No Movie or TV Show Ever Portrays the 1980s I Remember
The eighties! They sure were great, weren’t they? We had classic video games, everything was neon including the clothing, kids rode bicycles, blockbuster...
The Story I Like To Tell About My Father
My father died last spring. We think he had covid, but we'll never know for sure. I didn't talk about it much at the time, because I didn't feel up to having...
Some Good Things That Happened In 2020
Remember that movie My Favorite Year? I saw it as a kid and all I remember is Peter O’Toole being super-drunk in like twenty directions. Well, needless to...
Most Television From Before 2000 Is Trapped in the Uncanny Valley
I recently broke down and bought a bunch of classic Doctor Who stories on Blu-ray, and then figured out how to watch Blu-rays on my computer monitor. I had...
In Praise of Burnout
I used to think burnout was this mythic thing that happened to some unlucky people somewhere else. But over the course of my life, I’ve gotten pretty...