Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics
Edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace Peterson

Published by Nightboat Books.

Forthcoming March 2013
550 pp.
7×10”
$27.95 Paperback
978-1-937658-10-6
Poetry and LGBT Studies

The first of its kind, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poeticsgathers together a diverse range of 55 poets with varying aesthetics and backgrounds. In addition to generous samples of poetry by each trans writer, the book also includes “poetics statements”—reflections by each poet that provide context for their work covering a range of issues from identification and embodiment to language and activism.

Poets include Samuel Ace, kari edwards, Joy Ladin, Dawn Lundy Martin, Trish Salah, John Wieners, Micha Cardenas, Eileen Myles, Duriel Harris, Max Wolf Valerio, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Kit Yan, and more.

TC Tolbert, a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice, is the author of territories of folding, spirare, and the forthcoming Gephyromania. Tolbert lives in Tucson.

Tim Trace Peterson is a poet, critic, and editor. The author of Since I Moved In and Violet Speech, Peterson is co-editor of the forthcoming Gil Ott: Collected Writings and lives in Brooklyn.

To see the cover, go here.

We are putting this anthology together because your words matter.  Our lives matter.  The bodies of trans and genderqueer people becoming.  Becoming voice.

The work submitted for this anthology was overwhelmingly important and beautiful.  Inspiring and necessary.  Because we are committed to foregrounding the best work being done by trans and genderqueer authors and making that available as widely as possible, we have decided to include 50 authors in the print Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry.  We are also putting together a Trans and Genderqueer Poetry online feature for EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts that will feature the work of 20 additional trans and genderqueer poets. This will essentially be a supplement to the anthology, and its release will coordinate with the release of the book (late fall 2012).

We are thrilled with the quality of the work and are so excited to begin editing, organizing, and designing the book and online supplement.  We are blessed to be so totally immersed in some f*ing brilliant writing by this phenomenal trans and genderqueer community we get to be a part of.  Thank you, again and again, for sending in your work.  For your faith in the project and in us, as editors.

May this be only the beginning of trans and genderqueer anthologies.  Of trans and genderqueer online poetry hubs.  Of trans and genderqueer poetry readings, slams, salons.  On and on!

Dear Author,                                                                                                       Dec 11, 2011

Thank you for submitting to the Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry! We have been absolutely overwhelmed and awed at the sheer number of submissions, the quality of the work, and the generosity of the response to this call!

We have cried more than once upon opening up an email that shares how important an anthology like this is, how grateful the author is to know that it will exist, whether their work makes it in or not. We want you to know how grateful we are for you taking an interest in this project, and sending us your work for consideration. Thank you for your encouragement, for your faith in this book and in us as editors.

So what happens next? Over the next 2 months, we will be printing the poems submitted by you and over 200 other authors. We will be reading them out loud on a purple couch to a 14 year old dog and the echoes will reverberate between Tucson and Brooklyn. We’ll be arguing over them and with them. Taking them to coffee. Taking them to bed.  

We are so grateful to have this time with your words!

TC and Trace