Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Last updated

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.png
Author Andrea Lawlor
CountryUnited States
Genre
Set inUnited States, 1993
Published
Pages388 [1]
Awards Whiting Award
ISBN 0-525-56618-X
Website https://www.anderlawlor.com/paul

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a novel by American writer Andrea Lawlor. It was published in 2017 by Rescue Press. The book is heavily influenced by the queer culture of the 1990s, and took Lawlor 15 years to write.

Contents

The picaresque novel follows Paul, a 23-year-old who discovers that he can shapeshift and uses this ability to alter his gender expression while wandering the United States. He is a flâneur who enjoys wearing performative outfits and seeks out various sexual experiences with a diverse assortment of partners; his gender identity is never made explicit. Set in 1993, the novel takes place in various locations where the author has lived. The text exhibits postmodern influences, utilizing footnotes and pastiche, with short fables interspersed throughout.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is Andrea Lawlor's debut novel. The book received positive reviews, with reviewers praising its novel approach to gender and sex as well as its innovative structure and period accuracy. It was republished by Vintage Books in 2019, and Lawlor received a Whiting Award for the book.

Background

Writer Andrea Lawlor was involved with queer activism as an undergraduate in the 1990s, founding the first lesbian and gay group at Fordham University. [2] They began writing Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl in San Francisco when they were 30 years old. They had just quit a corporate job and began exploring creative writing while working at a bookstore, [3] taking a night class at Gotham Writers' Workshop. [4] The first draft of Paul began as a retelling of the Tiresias myth. [4] The concept was also influenced by Orlando: A Biography , which Lawlor read in high school "because it was on a list of books with something queer in them". [5] Ovid's Metamorphoses [6] and Wild Seed were additional influences. [2]

Lawlor later enrolled in a creative writing graduate program taught by Samuel R. Delany at Temple University, and turned in the draft; Delany encouraged them to continue working on the story. [3] [4] Lawlor completed the first draft of the novel while in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Massachusetts. They worked on the novel while enrolled in graduate classes, teaching, working, and caring for a baby with their partner. [3] The novel took 15 years to complete. [5]

"I tried outlining, tried to understand three-act structure, tried to impose a plot, but kept coming back to my sense that I just needed to follow Paul, that my structure was going to have to be a little queer as well."

Andrea Lawlor,2018 [4]

According to Lawlor, the draft was initially rejected by various publishers because they did not think it had enough plot or conflict. Lawlor refused to make protagonist Paul learn a lesson in the text, believing that conventional plot structure would make the novel unrealistic. [3]

Lawlor is close friends with Jordy Rosenberg, author of the queer novel Confessions of the Fox ; Rosenberg lives with Lawlor's family. [5] The two authors' novels were among the first by transgender or non-binary authors to be picked up by major publishing houses. [7]

Publication

Rescue Press published Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl with an initial run of 500 copies [3] in November 2017. [1] It was Lawlor's debut novel. [2] Despite the limited initial printing, the novel was reviewed in the "Briefly Noted" section of The New Yorker , which Lawlor said prompted widespread interest in the book as well as potential film rights. (The book was optioned by Ryan Murphy.) Lawlor was subsequently able to begin working with literary agent PJ Mark, who negotiated a deal for broader publication with Vintage Books. [3]

Vintage Books reprinted Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl in 2019. [5] According to Lawlor, half of the profits from the reprint go to Rescue Press in perpetuity. [3] Picador published Paul in Britain [6] and Australia in 2019. [8]

Content

A portion of the novel takes place in Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown Historic District, 2.jpg
A portion of the novel takes place in Provincetown, Massachusetts

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is set in 1993, [6] and its content is heavily influenced by the queer culture of the 1990s. The novel's protagonist, 23-year-old [2] Paul Polydoris, is a student and bartender who discovers that he is secretly capable of shapeshifting. He uses this ability to change his gender expression, sometimes for sexual purposes, while adventuring across the United States [3] [5] and avoiding voicemails from his first love who has been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. [9] Settings include the punk subculture of Iowa City, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Provincetown, Massachusetts in the off-season, [5] and a leather bar backroom in Chicago. All these settings are in places the author has lived. [2]

"Call anybody Paul and they get to be a Paul."

Gertrude Stein,as quoted in the epigraph of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl [10]

Paul Polydoris conceives of himself as Paul and uses the masculine pronoun for himself throughout the narrative, although his gender identity is never explicit to him or the reader. He is characterized, and characterizes himself, as a flâneur who is gratified by wearing performative outfits and seeking out various sexual experiences; he is able to "make himself be attracted to anyone". [11] : 157  He is also able to change his body and his genitalia, and does so often. [10] His ethnicity is similarly ambiguous, although less under his control. [11] : 157 

At the beginning of the novel, Paul is studying film studies in Iowa City. The novel opens with him shapeshifting his body to have breasts and a vagina, dressing in feminine clothing, and going out to a bar while looking like "the girl he wanted to fuck". At the bar, his friend Jane believes he is in costume and is impressed by how realistically female he looks. He later becomes a muscular bottom at a leather bar while traveling to Chicago so he can "see what leather guys [do] with other leather guys," and takes on the appearance of a girl in a miniskirt to experience the sex lives of "normal straight people". [10] All of these identities are temporary for him. [11] : 157 

Later in the novel he spends an extended period as a femme lesbian named Polly. [12] He goes to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival with Jane and meets a woman named Diane; Diane and Polly have sex in the woods and begin a committed lesbian relationship. When Jane later reveals Paul's history and shapeshifting ability to Diane, she is initially angry and accusing him of lying. He responds that he is not a man, and doesn't know what he is; the two reconcile after Diane tells him that "you smell like a girl all the time" and that she believes he is truly female. Paul goes to Provincetown with Diane, where he finds that his experiences and feelings are shaped by being a girl. When Diane breaks his heart, he becomes a man once again and travels to San Francisco, continuing to seek out sexual experiences including giving an outdoor blowjob to a "dirty hippie". He learns that his first boyfriend has died of AIDS, has a short-lived gay relationship, and meets another person who can shapeshift like him; this person becomes his friend and rejects his romantic advances. The novel closes with Paul walking through San Francisco, which he describes as a city as "various as himself". [10]

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a picaresque novel [2] [11] : 155  [10] [13] : 497  with short, relevant fables interspersed throughout. Devices from postmodern literature such as footnotes and pastiche are present in the text. [5] Magical realism is also incorporated. [11] : 159  Cultural and academic figures from the period are mentioned in the text as well, including theorists Lauren Berlant, Leo Bersani, and Judith Butler as well as others like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean Genet, and Jeanne Moreau. Cultural works mentioned include Orlando, The Well of Loneliness , and Giovanni's Room. [12] Lawlor has described the novel as "thinly veiled autobiography" but also stated that "at the end of the day, I'm not Paul and Paul is not me". [14]

Reception

Reviews

A review in the "Briefly Noted" section of The New Yorker found Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl to be a successful combination of "pop culture, gender theory, and smut", and praised the realistic way protagonist Paul is written. [3] [15] The Guardian praised the book for its period accuracy as well as its well-written depictions of sex. The review argued that the book's "unapologetically queer" nature should not hinder its mainstream success, describing Lawlor's writing as "evocative and urgent". [6] Another mention of Paul in The Guardian characterized the novel as "a picaresque romp". [2] The Irish Times praised the book as "a celebration of being young and queer," and contrasted it with the bildungsroman and künstlerroman genres while noting that it differs from these forms in its avoidance of an enlightened resolution: "the 'journeying' that Paul takes is not so much one of enlightenment or greater knowledge, but through different queer communities, different forms of sexual and intimate relationships, and the myriad possibilities of his shapeshifting form". [12]

The Saturday Paper described protagonist Paul as "an enfant terrible with heart", and the novel as "a sassy read, skilfully balancing humour with pathos". [16] A review in Vice focused specifically on the role of music in Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, praising Lawlor's accuracy and attention to detail in selecting songs and artists to mention. [17] The Skinny found that the novel "manages to define queerness in a way few books have been able to achieve", with the reviewer expressing gratitude for its status as "a book about a queer body that is a source of pleasure, rather than one of self-hatred, to be pitied or condemned". [18]

In the London Review of Books , a review by Elisa Gabbert stated that "the novel seems to look at the camera and wink" as its complexity develops, and noted that Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl ends in medias res. [10] In the Sydney Review of Books , Greta LaFleur wrote that the novel is "both about trans experience and a vision of trans experience that is not yet, but could be [...] a potential that exists on psychic, social, physical, and cultural levels for all of us". [8] The Los Angeles Review of Books described Paul as an exciting character, praised the novel's "gritty and uninhibited sexuality", and concluded that "Lawlor has written an intoxicatingly rousing masterpiece". [19] The White Review reviewed Paul as "fun, and frequently hilarious", with Juliet Jacques writing that the novel "short-circuits not just the established transition narrative, but also the need that many trans and non-binary people feel to clarify their identities, and have them understood by others." Jacques concluded that the book is effective and innovative. [7] Rain Taxi also praised the text in a review that noted its "warm tone and livewire voice" and its "nuanced treatment of a conceit that could easily yield to gimmick or cliché", concluding that "Lawlor is a magician, and a very good one". [20]

A starred review in Kirkus Reviews found Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl to be "groundbreaking, shape- and genre-shifting work from a daring writer", and described the narrative as "magical, sexual, and hopeful" with "taut, self-aware, and carnal" prose. [21] Booklist reviewed the novel as "a coming-of-age fairy tale without the easy moral, a mix of comedy and tenderness and backroom sexual exploits", and praised the author's use of genre. [1] In Bookforum , Brian Blanchfield described the premise of Paul as "genius", and argued that Lawlor's writing style exploits readers' expectations to make the reader "part of the project". [22] A starred review in Foreword Reviews described the book as "a hilarious, original, gender-fluid novel replete with 1990s cachet, sex, and queer identity" that "introduces hefty topics in a highly entertaining, fresh, and thought-provoking way", praising it as an impressive debut novel and "a new benchmark for gender-nonconforming literature". [23]

Maggie Nelson praised the sex scenes in Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl as "HOT". [2] A Lambda Literary Foundation review stated that "Andrea Lawlor has coolly escorted sex back into conversations about gender, which have long been unmoored from fucking in the name of mainstream didactics and respectability", praising the novel as "an intelligent and dashing work ". [24] The F-Word published a review describing Lawlor as "a brilliantly astute writer" and stating that Paul "reads like a cult classic from the beginning". [25]

Awards and lists

Lawlor received a Whiting Award for Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. [3] The book was a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Awards [26] and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature in 2018. [27]

Carmen Maria Machado selected Paul for her "A Year in Reading" list in 2017, praising it as a "sexy, picaresque" novel. [28] In 2018, R. L. Goldberg included it in their list "Toward Creating a Trans Literary Canon" in The Paris Review . [29] In 2019, Dazed listed the book among "11 new LGBTQ books to read", [30] Tor.com included it on a list of "Our Favorite LGBTQ+ Reads of the Past Year", [31] and Oprah Daily listed it among the best LGBTQ books of the year. [32]

Academic analysis

A Feminist Formations article asserted that Paul's "gender processes" in the novel "complicate the nature/culture binary", which the article's author described as "a crucial project from a queer ecological/ecofeminist perspective, given that the culture/nature binary supports degradation of both the Earth and marginalized people". [11] : 155  The article compared the phenomenon of Paul's identity in the novel to concepts from the work of Gaston Bachelard (topophilia and The Poetics of Space ) [11] : 156  and contrasted it with the work of Judith Butler ( Gender Trouble ). [11] : 158  It explores the presence of magical realism in the text, arguing that "the literary category of 'magical realism' that might otherwise contain the metamorphoses in this novel becomes inadequate since there is no stable ground of gender, no actual mundane, against which the 'magical' or the 'real' would be defined". [11] : 159  The article concludes that "in his ardent receptivity to life, [Paul] offers to the reader a vision of boundless appreciation for the liminal, magical naturecultures of queer spaces and subcultural movements in American history". [11] : 171 

In Studies in the Novel , Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl was included in a review of five contemporary novels by transgender authors. [13] : 492  The review noted the distinct avoidance of linear progressions in Paul, stating that "the novel invokes a wish for pluralizing and easily embodying genders—what it does away with is the notion that permanence and direction are suited to everyone" and that "not much progress occurs for Paul" in the course of the narrative. [13] : 498  It characterized the novel as picaresque for its "undermining of linearity and resolution [...] erratic and socially marginal protagonist [...] and the episodic nature of the narrative occasioned by repeated scene-fleeing", but argued against James Mandrell's description of the picaresque as inherently conservative, describing the use of the picaresque narrative form in Paul as "a recognition that there is value in remaining outside capitalist and heteronormative logics that would want to assimilate every dissident subject" and a reflection of the historical marginalization of queer people. [13] : 498–499 

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Schulman</span> American writer (born 1958)

Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

A stone butch is a lesbian who displays female butchness or traditional "masculinity" and who does not allow their genitals to be touched during sexual activity, as opposed to a stone femme.

Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City.

Paul Burston is a Welsh journalist and author. He worked for the London gay policing group GALOP and was an activist with ACT UP before moving into journalism. He edited, for some years, the LGBT section of Time Out and founded the Polari Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Camper</span> Cartoonist and graphic artist

Jennifer Camper is a cartoonist and graphic artist whose work is inspired by her own experiences as a Lebanese-American lesbian. Her work has been included in various outlets such as newspapers and magazines since the 1980s, as well as in exhibits in Europe and the United States. Furthermore, Camper is the creator and founding director of the biennial Queers and Comics conference.

<i>Melissa</i> (novel) 2015 book by Alex Gino

Melissa, previously published as George until April 2022, is a children's novel about a young transgender girl written by American author Alex Gino. The novel tells the story of Melissa, a fourth-grade girl who is struggling to be herself to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees Melissa as George, a boy. Melissa uses the class play, Charlotte's Web, to show her mom that she is a girl by switching roles with her best friend, and playing the part of Charlotte. Scholastic first published the novel on August 25, 2015, and it has had a mixed reaction because of its LGBT+ content. In 2021, Gino retitled the novel Melissa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Ramadan</span> Syrian–Canadian novelist, public speaker, and LGBTQ-refugee activist

Ahmad Danny Ramadan is a Syrian–Canadian novelist, public speaker, and LGBTQ-refugee activist who was born in Damascus, Syria. Ramadan's work focuses on themes of immigration, identity, diaspora and belonging. His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, won multiple awards. The Foghorn Echoes won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Fierro</span> Fictional character of series Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

Alex Fierro is a fictional character and one of the main characters in Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series. Alex's portrayal in The Hammer of Thor was praised for its honest and accurate approach to the character's genderfluid identity. As a child of Loki, Alex is a demigod and also capable of shapeshifting; in The Hammer of Thor, Alex becomes an einherjar.

Bisexual literature is a subgenre of LGBT literature that includes literary works and authors that address the topic of bisexuality or biromanticism. This includes characters, plot lines, and/or themes portraying bisexual behavior in both men and women.

Gabby Rivera is an American writer and storyteller. She is the author of the 2016 young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath, and wrote the 2017–2018 Marvel comic book America, about superhero America Chavez. Her work often addresses issues of identity and representation for people of color and the queer community, within American popular culture. Rivera is Puerto Rican and from the Bronx.

Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.

Adrienne Shaw is an American game studies scholar and Associate Professor at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication. She is known for her work on queer theory and LGBTQ representation in video games. She is the author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, the co-editor of Queer Game Studies, and the founder of the LGBTQ Video Games Archive.

<i>Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me</i> Graphic novel

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me is a graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O'Connell. It follows Frederica "Freddy" Riley throughout her struggles with her on-again, off-again relationship with the eponymous Laura Dean. The novel was first published by First Second Books on May 7, 2019. A young adult and lesbian teen novel, Laura Dean includes themes about teenage lesbian and queer sexuality.

<i>Swimming in the Dark</i> 2020 Polish LGBT novel

Swimming in the Dark is a 2020 novel by Polish writer Tomasz Jędrowski. This novel was subject to a "hotly contested" six-way publishing auction, from which Bloomsbury gained rights. After being first published in English by Bloomsbury in February, Robert Sudół's translation was released in Poland later in the month. The writer’s debut novel, it is a gay love story set in the closing years of the Polish People's Republic. It received praise for both its quality of writing and compelling story as well as its tactful treatment of its LGBTQ themes. It received at least one starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was later longlist-nominated for the HWA Debut Crown.

<i>Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars</i> 2016 novel

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir is a 2016 Canadian book by Kai Cheng Thom. A surrealist novel, it follows an unnamed transgender woman protagonist who leaves home at a young age to live on the Street of Miracles—where various sex work takes place—with other "femmes". After one of them is killed, others form a gang and begin to attack men on the street.

<i>Lawn Boy</i> (Evison novel) 2018 novel by Jonathan Evison

Lawn Boy is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel written by Jonathan Evison and published in 2018 by Algonquin Books. It tells the story of Mike Muñoz, a young adult Mexican American who has faced hardship ever since his childhood and is now going through a phase of self-discovery.

<i>Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms</i> 2021 graphic novel by Crystal Frasier

Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms, sometimes stylized as Cheer Up!, is a young adult graphic novel written by Crystal Frasier, with art by Val Wise and lettering by Oscar Jupiter. Published on August 10, 2021, by Oni Press, it tells the story of two queer high school girls, Beatrice – who is transgender – and Annie, as they try and become cheerleaders.

<i>Gender Queer</i> 2019 graphic memoir

Gender Queer: A Memoir is a 2019 graphic memoir written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe. It recounts Kobabe's journey from adolescence to adulthood and the author's exploration of gender identity and sexuality, ultimately identifying as being outside of the gender binary.

Andrea Lawlor is an American author and winner of the 2020 Whiting Award for Fiction for their novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Winterroth, Andrea (2017-11-01). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Booklist . pp. 31–32.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Needham, Alex (2019-04-05). "Andrea Lawlor: 'I feel that every good thing in my life has come from being queer'". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2023-11-05. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Canfield, David (2020-03-25). "Queer author Andrea Lawlor just won a Whiting Award. It's been a long, gratifying road". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on 2023-12-23. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Lawlor, Andrea; Rosenberg, Jordy (2018-08-10). "Jordy Rosenberg and Andrea Lawlor on Exploding Narrative Structure and Theory Posturing". The Millions . Archived from the original on 2023-12-22. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Haldeman, Peter (2018-10-24). "The Coming of Age of Transgender Literature". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2023-06-22. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Parkinson, Hannah Jane (2019-05-06). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor – urgent and evocative". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2023-12-21. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  7. 1 2 Jacques, Juliet (July 2019). "Andrea Lawlor's 'Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl'". The White Review . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  8. 1 2 LaFleur, Greta (2019-07-26). "A Fairy's Tale". Sydney Review of Books . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  9. ↑ Adair, Cassius (2019-05-10). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor". MAKE Literary Magazine . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gabbert, Elisa (2019-08-01). "I want to ride a dragon". London Review of Books . Vol. 41, no. 15. ISSN   0260-9592. Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Belmont, Cynthia (2023). "Organic Transitioning and Queer Topophilia in Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Feminist Formations . 35 (2): 154–173. doi:10.1353/ff.2023.a907925. ISSN   2151-7371. S2CID   263245807.
  12. 1 2 3 Da Cunha Lewin, Katie (2019-07-04). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl: Sexual shapeshifting celebration of being young and queer". The Irish Times . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Pellegrini, Chiara (2023). "Temporalities Beyond Transition: Form, Genre, and Contemporary Trans Novels". Studies in the Novel . 55 (4): 492–508. doi:10.1353/sdn.2023.a913308. ISSN   1934-1512. S2CID   265538722.
  14. ↑ Anderson-Minshall, Jacob (2019-07-29). "Writer Andrea Lawlor Is a Worthy Successor to Virginia Woolf". The Advocate . Archived from the original on 2023-12-21. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  15. ↑ "Briefly Noted Book Reviews". The New Yorker . 2018-01-15. ISSN   0028-792X. Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  16. ↑ Hyde, Justine (2019-05-04). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". The Saturday Paper . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  17. ↑ O'Neill, Lauren (2019-04-18). "Music Drives Gender-Play Novel 'Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl'". Vice . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  18. ↑ Goh, Katie (2019-04-10). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor review: The Skinny". The Skinny . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  19. ↑ Valinsky, Michael (2017-11-14). "Gender-Bending the Body: On Andrea Lawlor's "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl"". Los Angeles Review of Books . Archived from the original on 2023-11-05. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  20. ↑ Moriarty, Jeremiah (2018-08-06). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Rain Taxi . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  21. ↑ "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Kirkus Reviews . 2017-08-20. Archived from the original on 2023-11-05. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  22. ↑ Blanchfield, Brian (February 2018). "Trans and Transient". Bookforum . Archived from the original on 2023-11-05. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  23. ↑ Carter, Monica (2017-11-01). "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl". Foreword Reviews . pp. 55–56.
  24. ↑ Fonseca, Sarah (2017-11-05). "'Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl' by Andrea Lawlor". Lambda Literary Foundation . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  25. ↑ Whitehead, Sophie (2019-07-02). "Sex, smut and shape-shifting". The F-Word . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  26. ↑ "2018 Firecracker Award Finalists Announced". Publishers Weekly . May 4, 2018. Archived from the original on 2023-12-23. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  27. ↑ Boureau, Ella (2018-03-06). "30th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced". Lambda Literary . Archived from the original on 2020-03-19. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  28. ↑ Machado, Carmen Maria (2017-12-06). "A Year in Reading: Carmen Maria Machado". The Millions . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  29. ↑ Goldberg, R. L. (2018-10-23). "Toward Creating a Trans Literary Canon". The Paris Review . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  30. ↑ Haidrani, Salma (2019-01-21). "11 new LGBTQ books to read in 2019". Dazed . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  31. ↑ "Our Favorite LGBTQ+ Reads of the Past Year". Tor.com . 2019-06-17. Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  32. ↑ Hart, Michelle (2019-11-12). "These LGBTQ Books Changed the Literary Landscape in 2019". Oprah Daily . Archived from the original on 2024-01-01. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.