Many realist novelists write to comment on the now. In practice, that means writing the near future so that it might be the near past when the book finally comes out. However, when things go to shit where a writer lives, and fast, it leaves a novelist guessing: How bad must I make reality in my novel for it to look like actual reality? Get it wrong by making reality too bleak and you’ve accidentally written a doomer dystopia; get it wrong by making reality too positive and you’ve accidentally written clueless nostalgic propaganda.
This problem has me—a trans woman who writes about trans women—paralyzed as I try to write my next novel. On January 28, I wrote an essay about Trump’s executive order that banned gender markers in passports other…
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Harper's Bazaar (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025