The "Transgender Vanguard" Presents the Ultimate Literary "Collection"

Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod, founders of Topside Press, offer the Press's first publication next week, The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, which showcases the work of 28 North American authors, with specific focus on the transgender narrative. 

The Collection has already received a host of accolades from a variety of literary media, including Publishers Weekly, which boasted,

"In this timely and thought-provoking anthology,...28 authors shed light on the complexity of the transgender spectrum. Their offerings provide unique insights into the emotional uncertainties and quotidian struggles that accompany finding and embracing one's identity in a world too often determined to impose traditional gender binaries.... [I]ts underlying message—that transgender experience is dynamic, valid, and worthy of fictive elucidation—makes the book more than worthwhile."

When just two years ago Lambda was asking "should trans literature exist?," 2012 has ushered in a number of fantastic trans memoirs and literary ventures, including Kate Bornstein's A Queer and Pleasant Danger and Sassafras Lowrey's newly released Roving Pack. Léger and MacLeod's volume introduces many lesser known, emerging writers that will undoubtedly be included in this 21st century "transgender vanguard." For this reader, the stories by R. Drew ("The Cafe"), RJ Edwards ("Black Holes"), and Terence Diamond ("Tomboy of the Western World") were exceptional and exquistely well-written. 

The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard
Edited by Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod
Topside Press
Paperback, 9780983242215, 364 pp.
October 2012