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Casey Plett | |
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| Born | June 20, 1987 [1] |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Period | 2010–present |
| Notable works | A Safe Girl to Love,Little Fish,A Dream of a Woman |
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| caseyplett | |
Casey Plett (born June 20, 1987) is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
Plett was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up in a Mennonite family in Morden, Manitoba. [2] [3] She attended high school in Eugene, Oregon, and later moved to Portland for college and New York for graduate school. [2] She has lived in Windsor, Ontario. [4] Plett currently teaches at Ohio University. [5] [6]
Plett previously wrote a regular column about her gender transition for McSweeney's Internet Tendency . [7] She has also written about her transition for Defector's series, Histories of Transition. [8] She is a book reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press [7] and has published work in Rookie , Plenitude , The Walrus , and Two Serious Ladies. [9]
Plett has cited Imogen Binnie, Elena Rose, and Julia Serano as some of her influences. [9]
Plett's first short story collection was published in 2014: A Safe Girl to Love. It became a cult classic, sharing stories of trans women across a range of settings and experiences. [10] It also won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction. [11] It was later reprinted by Arsenal Pulp Press with a new afterword from Plett in 2023. [10]
In addition to Plett's work as an author, she is the co-editor with Cat Fitzpatrick of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers, an anthology of speculative fiction from transgender authors published by Topside Press. [12] The collection may be the first to prioritize science fiction and fantasy written by trans authors. [13] Previously, Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan's Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure may have been the first speculative fiction trans story written by trans authors, and Brit Mandelo's Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction covered a collection of queer desire in speculative fiction but did not center trans experience in the same way. [13] [14]
Plett and Fitzpatrick met in the early 2010s at a writer's conference, and grew as writers during the 2010s, which Plett labels the "trans lit renaissance". [15] Fitzpatrick envisioned creating the anthology because she wanted to revive a long tradition of trans speculative fiction authorship. She was inspired by the writing of Rachel Pollack, who the anthology would eventually be dedicated to. She also wanted Topside Press to produce successful political writing, in the way that Ursula K. Le Guin and others in the second-wave feminist movement had used speculative fiction. She thought the genre would appeal to many trans readers, and she wanted to help reclaim its feminist traditions from trans-exclusionary currents, as in the writing of Joanna Russ. Fitzpatrick asked Plett to co-edit the work with her because Plett was skilled at character development. [16]
For the anthology, they chose to include 25 original works by authors who were often well known for queer literature but sometimes new to the genres of science fiction and fantasy. [13] [17] Some of its many authors include Imogen Binnie, Jeanne Thornton, Ryka Aoki, and Trish Salah. [17] [18] Some stories explore the intersection of transgender identity and disability or race, and other themes include queer love and family, dysphoria, medical and reproductive technology, cross-generational infighting, coming out and growing up pains, anti-trans violence, and suicide. [13] The collection has fewer explorations of nonbinary identity. [17]
Meanwhile, Elsewhere received a Stonewall Book Award in 2018. [19] Reviews by Strange Horizons and Publishers Weekly said that some stories had plot devices that were clunky for the genre, but that others had refreshing new ideas for science fiction and fantasy. [17] [13] Evelyn Deshane, reviewing for Plenitude , linked the strength of the work's creativity and novelty to the fact that it centered on real trans characters, not treating them as symbols of fantasy for cis readers as in most previous speculative fiction, as Plett explained in a 2015 Walrus piece. [18] Megan Milks, in her Strange Horizons review, praised the large variety of stories that brought quintessentially trans subjects and experiences to speculative fiction, showing "a field of vibrant possibilities" for the future. [13]
Plett published her debut novel in 2018, Little Fish . The book centers on Wendy, a trans woman in Winnipeg who weathers weeks of tragedy, learns that her grandfather may have been trans, and searches for trans culture and community across far distances. [20]
Quill & Quire gave the book a starred review, saying it is a work that centers transness rather than sanitizing it or hiding the violence inflicted against trans women. Jonathan Valelly's review describes the story's portrayal of collective community and heroism, calling it "a book that invites us to witness something so important, so complex, and so tender". [20]
In 2021 Plett published A Dream of a Woman, another short story collection with eight short stories about trans women. [21] Elanor Broker, reviewing for Portland Mercury , praised it as the "leading edge of trans storytelling" and appreciated its stories set in Oregon and Portland, saying it elevated neglected experiences using deep stories anchored in local settings. [22] Drew Burnett Gregory, reviewing for Autostraddle , says it is a trans love and forgiveness story, whose parts reveal deep nuances in that experience: with "immersive prose, they sting and salve, then sting again". [23]
A Dream of a Woman was longlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize. [24] Plett then served on the Giller Prize jury in 2022. [25]
Plett published On Community in 2023. [26] It is a short work compiling her thoughts and experiences about community, insisting on the neutrality of community and exploring various questions and definitions in a playful and invitational tone. Laura Sackton, reviewing for Book Riot , praised the book's insights, funny and informal tone, and ability to start a conversation about the subject: "Plett opens the doors to so many rich conversations about what community—in all its iterations—can and cannot do". [27]
Topside Press had supported Plett and Fitzpatrick's creation of Meanwhile, Elsewhere. [12] After Topside Press was disbanded, Plett and Fitzpatrick co-founded LittlePuss Press, done initially to continue the printing of the anthology. The press launched in 2020 and focuses on publishing works by queer and trans authors, although they welcome submissions from anyone. [28]
Their second publication was Faltas, by Cecilia Gentili. It was the recipient of the 2023 Stonewall Award in the nonfiction category. [28]
In 2023, they published Girlfriends , by Emily Zhou. [29] Plett was the book's editor. [30] Girlfriends won the 2024 Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. [31] It was a finalist for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction and the 2024 Ferro–Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. [30] [32]
| Work | Awards | Result | Ref. |
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| A Safe Girl to Love | Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction | Won | [11] |
| Dayne Oglivie Prize | Nominated | [33] [34] | |
| Meanwhile, Elsewhere | Stonewall Book Award: Barbara Gittings Literature Award | Won | [19] |
| Little Fish | Amazon.ca First Novel Award | Won | [35] |
| Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction | Won | [36] | |
| A Dream of a Woman | Giller Prize | Longlisted | [37] [24] |
| On Community | Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction | Nominated | [38] [39] |
Works by Plett include the following:
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