.FOUR ESSAYS IN THIS COLLECTION WERE PUBLISHED PREVIOUSLY. “On Class and Writing” was published as “The Year in Work,” with Hazlitt (hazlitt.net); “Tomboy” was published as “The In-Between Space,” also with Hazlitt, “Mom, Dad, Other” was published as “I’m a Non-Binary Parent. There Still Isn’t Space for Me,” with Xtra (dailyxtra.com), and “Like a Boy but Not a Boy” was included in the anthology Swelling with Pride, edited by Sara Graefe and published by Caitlin Press.
Thank you to David MacKinnon, the executor of Gwendolyn MacEwen’s estate, for permission to reprint lines from “Certain Flowers” at the beginning of “The People’s Poetry.” I first read this poem in Rosemary Sullivan’s biography of Gwendolyn MacEwen, Shadow Maker, and it stuck with me.
In researching “The People’s Poetry,” I interviewed Nick Mount and Hannah McGregor. Although I didn’t end up quoting either of them in the piece, our conversations informed and enriched my thinking and knowledge on many of the moments and issues that arise in the piece. Thank you, as well, to friends and colleagues who read an earlier iteration of the essay and gave me vital feedback on it.
When I think about gender and trans history, I think immediately about Morgan M. Page’s One from the Vaults podcast; basically all of Ivan Coyote’s and S. Bear Bergman’s books; the writing of Judith Butler, Gwen Benaway, Kai Cheng Thom, and Maggie Nelson; and A.K. Summers’s Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag. Although none of these writers are quoted in this book, I am deeply indebted to and grateful for their work.
The final line of “Mom, Dad, Other” reads, “I need the world to make just enough space for me that I can become completely unremarkable.” The only way that I can live my life in a way that even approaches unremarkable (including basic rights, like the option to have the correct gender marker on my ID), is thanks to the trans people and activists who came before me, who made space for themselves and for everyone who came after. Thank you.
The writings of Andrew Solomon, Alicia Elliott, and Esmé Weijun Wang have been indispensable to me as I’ve thought and written about mental illness and mental health.
When I think about cycling and bike mechanics, I feel the particular need to thank Jobst Brandt, author of The Bicycle Wheel; Paul Fournel, author of Need for the Bike; and my friend and former co-worker and mentor, Emiliano Sepulveda.
The Access Copyright Foundation, via a Marian Hebb Research Grant, and the Canada Council, via a Research and Creation Grant, supported the writing of this book. I’m very grateful for the support. (Relatedly—thank to you to the person who transcribed all of my interviews. You’re fastidious and reliable and the only person I would have trusted to transcribe them!)
Thank you to everyone at Arsenal Pulp—Brian, Shirarose, Jaz, Cynara—for your amazing work and for giving this book a home. Thank you, also, to Stephanie Sinclair, who believed in this project before I’d drafted my first book proposal.
A huge thank-you to everyone who spoke with me for “Everyone Is Sober and No One Can Drive”: Adam Myatt, April, Ben Rawluk, David Phillips, Deneige, Erika Thorkelson, Erin Flegg, Jamie, “Jane,” John Elizabeth Stintzi, Kai Conradi, Kyle, Laura Friesen, Nadine Boulay, rhean murray, Soraya Roberts. Our conversations were my favourite thing about writing this book.
And thank you to my families: the Bennett-Ha-Kidd-Koks, the Keatses and Osborns, Benny and Emily and Erika and Erin and Beth and Leah. Special thank-yous to Kim, Will, and Sinclair .