We may seem to be in a golden age of trans books, with novels like Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby and Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater earning mainstream acclaim—but the reality of trans inclusion in media and publishing is considerably more fraught. Many trans writers still struggle to get published or paid fairly for their work, while books written by or featuring trans, queer, and gender-nonconforming individuals are being banned around the country.
It’s why Girl Dad Press, a new project from culture writer Niko Stratis and Gender Reveal podcast host Tuck Woodstock, feels so welcome at such a repressive moment. Girl Dad’s ethos revolves around allowing its authors and artists to shine in ways that don’t cater to a cis audience (to wit, the press grew out of a Lambda Literary Award-winning zine dedicated to trans readings of the Fast & Furious film franchise), but its founders aren’t here to create any kind of clichéd “trans savior” narrative. This week, Vogue spoke to Stratis and Woodstock about what they’re up to. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
Vogue: What made you feel like the time was right in publishing for Girl Dad?
Tuck Woodstock: I don’t know that it has anything to do with the state of publishing. I mean, we didn’t get into this because the economic forces seemed good. [Laughs.] We made a book as a joke last year that did surprisingly well, and then won an award, and that got us really excited about the potential of not only reprinting that book, but also making more little books that potentially also start as jokes and grow into something big and fun that thousands of people can enjoy. Also, just speaking for myself, the projects that I’m the most excited about that queer and trans people make are often not projects that are easy sells to the Big Five publishers, and it just felt like there was a lot of space for more weird, freaky, queer, trans projects. But it’s not because we think it will make a ton of money in the lucrative field of independent publishing.
Niko Stratis: I remember writing about the show Jackass for Bitch magazine back when we still had a Bitch magazine. I had talked about it as, like, “Jackass is this thing that speaks to me in a trans way.” And most people were like, “That’s ridiculous.” The editorial staff at Bitch, though, were like, “Could you do this for us?” So I wrote that essay, and it went really well, and I was kind of like, how do I turn this into something bigger? When I got asked about wanting to write a book, though, everybody was like, “Well, we really want your transition memoir.” But I didn’t really want to have to do all that stuff. I wanted to write about this silly, dumb stuff that I think is an integral part of me, but I am aware that that’s a harder sell. So, like, how do you do that in a publishing environment that is very much, like, If you’re not first, you’re last?