Tom: Yeah, some of my writing is on Prettyqueer but it’s a small minority compared to the other writing. And that was by design. I never wanted it to be about me and, in fact, I really struggle with posting as frequently as I do because I don’t want it to be some microphone for my interests.
Morty: I am really curious why you have decided to go into publishing with Riley and start Topside Press and at the same time start Prettyqueer.com with Julie and Red.
Tom: It’s interesting because although they were not conceived together, Prettyqueer and Topside play off each other really well. Prettyqueer is completely non-fiction, expository writing in essay format and it’s much more ephemeral, much more able to respond to minute by minute things. Topside, for me, is an opportunity to create something that’s more of an object. Topside comes out of an opportunity in the way the publishing industry is changing. It’s not about grasping onto a sinking ship but saying, well, Alyson Press went under and mainstream publishers aren’t publishing gay things anymore. Also, it is incredibly difficult to get a novel published and if you have trans or queer characters your chances of being published are really low in America. So, I asked myself, is this because people are not writing these stories. Well, no, because people are writing these stories, although not in as great quantity as they should be. The other question is: is there no audience for this? Have people stopped reading long form fiction, or short stories? And I think there is an audience extremely hungry for this. The inspiration I always go back to is Sarah Schulman’s books. Her books are seminal to lesbian culture in the 80’s. Not all, but many of them are about being a lesbian in the East Village, in the 80’s, during the summertime. They are about community and that wonderful place that has changed a lot in the last 30 years in unimaginable ways. And I think no historian can capture that experience in quite the same way as, for instance, After Dolores, can. And it’s sad to me that people like you and I have lived through the last ten years in making queer and trans culture, going to parties, fucking, and all of these things are not recorded in any way in any cultural form. So, that’s why I wanted to start publishing books.
Morty: What they say now about the difference between big publishing company versus little publishing company has mostly to do with the degrees of marketing that can happen. As a small publisher, do you think you can market the heck out of a book to make a big impact with what you’ve got?
Tom: Absolutely. If there is one thing that trans people love it’s the internet. It’s really just labor, there is not a huge investment with capital. With book publishing now, the barrier to entry is so low for publishers. A lot of small players can get into the game now because of new technologies in product on demand publishing and new distribution channels. It’s not required anymore to have 3000 books waiting to be sold.
Morty: Your new anthology of trans fiction will be the first of it’s kind, correct? 
Tom: Right, that’s true. And, really, there are barely any books of trans fiction. First, the way we have defined transgender for our book, rather than police the identities of the authors, because I don’t think that’s productive or healthy in a political way, is by looking for fiction where the protagonist is trans. And we have a really wide umbrella for what that looks like. Finding authors that have done that is very small unless you include authors like Jeffrey Eugenides or John Irving who have trans characters in their books all the time but they’re terrible.
Morty: Would you then include an author who doesn’t identify as trans but has trans characters in their story?
Tom: Yes, if it’s done correctly. You and I know what is authentic and what is not. And we know that Middlesex stinks to high heaven. We get that. A really good example of this is Zoe Whittall, who won the Lambda last year in the transgender category,for her book Holding Still for as Long as Possible. Her book is completely brilliant. I think it’s one of the best books about trans people I’ve ever read. And she is a queer woman. A brilliant writer.

Morty: So, how was the submission process for your new anthology?
Tom: It was amazing. We received hundreds of submissions. And there was a lot of really good work. We ended up with 28 in the collection and it’s going to be about 350 pages. We wanted to not only include a wide diversity of narratives but…there is some fiction that is very standard realism, MFA fiction, very good craft and really solid and some of it is much more experimental. We wanted to value both types of work and it is exciting to be able to put those two things together in the anthology.
Morty: Did you set out with the idea you’d have a certain amount of, say, genderqueer protagonists or trans female protagonists?
Tom: It’s so funny to look back because we really didn’t know what was going to happen. Our goal was to pick the absolute best work because we feel the  best way to serve the artistic communities that trans people are working in is to have extremely high standards for the work. And I have varying ways of what high standards look like. You and I know that history is made by the people who write it. And there are people in our community like Michelle Tea or Silas Howard who are content creators, making things that are going to last for a very long time. But, there is a lot of junk out there, too. And we are working really hard to change that. So, we didn’t really pick work based on content. Actually, we had a few interesting patterns come up. We saw a disturbing number of submissions that dealt with suicide and suicidal feelings. Sometimes outward wrist slitting, sometimes more metaphorical. And that was something we wanted to represent but didn’t want to overwhelm.
We saw a lot of texts about children as well. About trans kids being weird kids. And I think that’s fine, although I think it’s difficult to write fiction where a child is the protagonist and do it well. I think there is a narrative about trans where it’s the whole I played with trucks as a little girl or I wore dresses as a young boy. These narratives aren’t very interesting to me as an adult. What I was really looking for was the stories of my life, of the lives of the people that are out there. There is this whole world that we are inhabiting, we’re making all this stuff and living lives and how can we record that in some way.
Morty: You’re printing books and doing digital copies as well?
Tom: Yeah. Actually, we are printing hardback copies as well as softback because libraries prefer hardback. In the end, we realized a lot of people still want a physical book. And it’ll be available on any number of websites, from Amazon, from our site. It’ll be at bookstores. There will be a Kindle version. But we are changing the way people can get their hands on a copy because there are a lot of people who don’t have financial access to a physical copy. Or don’t want to go into a bookstore and ask for a trans book. I know that people all over the world read Prettyqueer and I know people in Palestine cannot get Amazon to send them any books. We didn’t want a situation where you could only buy the book if you had geographical privilege. So, we will have a library on the Topside Press website where anyone can register an account which will be free and you can read any of our books, or you can pay for it if you want to support the library. And that’s really important to me. It’s really important to me that anyone can read these books.
Morty: Many will just read the book online and not pay for it and that’s totally okay with you?
Tom: Completely okay. In the end, I have a lot of faith that people will buy the physical book and will buy the ebook but it’s going to be free for people who can’t or don’t want to. The people who are in need of this book, to see great work, great literature that’s about their lives are the least capable to pay for it. I’m not interested in this as a business that doesn’t care about those people. That’s why I’m making this stuff. Frankly, I think that is why writers write. I don’t think a writer sits down to write a novel and says, “I hope only people who can pay for this will read it.”
Morty: I really commend you for allowing that to happen.
Tom:  The trick, of course, is that the library, which allows you to read it for free, becomes an advertisement for people to purchase it. The secondary thing is we have a big marketing plan for queer and trans audiences but a really big part of this is the academy. I’ve written a lot about the academy and queer studies in colleges and how problematic they can be and I recognize they are a huge consumer of this work. The reality is that professors go and buy one copy of the book and they’ll make a photocopy and give it out to their class. So, you’re already not making any money off that and it’s illegal under copyright law. People do it anyway, all the time. We will make our books free to professors, with the pdf’s totally shareable, because what I recognize is it’s more important to gain readership at that level. I would much rather 1,000 students read stories from this collection than 50 of them purchase the book because that’s how you impact culture and that’s how you change the conversation about queer art. When colleges are doing LGBT programming and LGBT studies there is very little trans inclusion. And I want to change that. I want to go to these people and say, “You know how you teach gay and lesbian literature and you don’t teach any trans work, well, now you do.”
Morty: Many of the artists and writers I’ve interviewed are saying roughly the same thing and that’s the trans genre of writing isn’t very cohesive right now, though there are so many doing amazing work. Do you see this time as somewhat of a turning point?
Tom: I’ve said before that I believe trans art is about ten years behind gay art and that we would be catching up soon. And, in reality, we’re about 40 years behind gay art. If you think about what it was like to be a lesbian writer in 1972 and what was available to you in terms of publishers, audiences, and the academy it was very splintered. I don’t even think Elena Dykewomon was publishing at that time. Alyson books started in someone’s trunk, she went around and sold books to bookstores. And I think that’s where we are now. It’s still very splintered and we’re still learning. There is a community infrastructure that is still forming. And we have very little access to resources, so it’s building very slowly.
Morty: I am curious what your thoughts are about trans writing and trans lit in general?
Tom: I don’t know if they were trying to be provocative and I’m sure you saw this but the Lambda Literary blog published an article with the title “Is There Such a Thing as ‘Trans Lit’? And the issue is the question itself is transphobic. When you ask is there trans literature or trans film or trans photography it’s saying are there trans people. And this just happened with Frameline where they took money from Israel to program Israeli films and the director was quoted as saying “Oh, we would love to program Palestinian LGBTQ films but there are none out there.” Number one, that’s not true and number two, that’s a way to say there are no Palestinian people. They are an invented people. It’s just racist. So, questioning if there is trans literature is insane! Of course there is trans literature, you just don’t know where to find it. It’s complex because most people only have a rudimentary understanding of how the book industry or film industry works. There is no equity in Hollywood. The best films in Hollywood are not the ones that get made for real, legitimate capitalist reasons, not artistic reasons. Dan Brown, who wrote the DaVinci Code, that’s not the best book ever printed but I think it is the most profitable one. These are still industries and it’s bad to conflate artistic communities and industries. What we can do as artists who are innovative and smart is to take control of these industries and curate them in the direction we want them to go. So, yes, there is trans literature, we just have to publish it.
Morty: Right. Now there is Kickstarter and other crowdsourcing opportunities available to bring trans art and lit alive and get it to the next level. But, I feel there is something else going on, too.
Tom: Yeah, I think in the end places like Kickstarter will always be easier and much more successful for people who already have access to capital and I think that’s the irony with Kickstarter. The people who are getting their stuff funded are already people with MFA’s, already people who have a track record of success. At the same time Kickstarter put more funding into the arts last year than the NEA. I really want to bet on quality and that’s what we have done on Prettyqueer. I’m not saying everything we’ve done on the site is the best thing ever but what we do say is if you feel that writing is important, that craft is important in your work, people will read it. And we saw that from day one of being up. The reader response and the sharing that happens is partly from the quality on the site. One of the issues is why do bad things get made? That’s a very complex question. Some people in our community have gotten successful making low quality work. There is an interest in junk to some degree.
Morty: I’d like to know how Prettyqueer get started? What was the impetus to begin working on the website?
Tom: Well, I’m going to leave it up to your discretion on how much of this to publish but this is not a secret, I’ve said this in public in other places but never in print. (Editors note: no words were edited out of this answer) When I was asked to write for Original Plumbing I was asked to write every other Sunday for a couple of months, opposite Sundays as Rocco (Co-editor of Original Plumbing). I chose to write about books because I thought it would be a different thing for Original Plumbing, to expose the audience to different stuff. Not better, just different. I wrote about all kinds of books, including Zoe Whittals book, the one I just mentioned. And then Chaz Bono’s book and documentary came out and I picked it up with the intention to do a review of it. I texted Rocco and asked him if he wanted to come over and watch the Chaz documentary and I let him know I was going to be writing about it for the website. And he texted me back and said no, you can’t write about it. He denies this occurred but I have the text messages. He said you can’t write about Chaz Bono because we’ve been asked to sponsor his film at Frameline and we’re planning on doing business with him and we can’t have anything bad about him up on the website. I said I was just going to do an honest review, it’s not anything bad, it’s certainly not a personal attack, it’ll just be an honest review of the book. He said no, you can’t do that. And, umm, we had a discussion about it and I agreed not to write it. I then had my final post not too long after and I never wrote for them again. A month later we started Prettyqueer because I was really tired of this behavior of what I think is selling out. I don’t know if they ever did any business with Chaz Bono but everything that I stood for and everything that I was writing about was antithetical to what Chaz Bono wanted to happen. What Chaz Bono wants is to see his personal advancement and profit. This is not news, he even said this at the Trans Health Conference. When he was told by people in the audience that he said things many trans people did not agree with he simply said I’m just here to promote my book. He was not at the Trans Health Conference to contribute to community, he was there to sell his book. And what I want to do is respond to that. So, we started Prettyqueer, Red, Julie and I. It’s a pretty equitable distribution of work. If anything, Red and Julie do the majority. We launched it a year ago, on June 27th.

Morty: I appreciate your answer and consider it very brave. No, really, let’s be honest, we live in somewhat of a trans community bubble where if you talk in any way negatively about another in the community, even if it’s true, you’re considered to be against the community.
Tom: I don’t think it’s talking shit to tell the truth.
Morty: No! It’s telling the truth that can be scary.
Tom: Well, I’m sick of living in a world where we can’t tell the truth just because you’re going to offend somebody! We don’t require everything on Prettyqueer to agree with our thoughts at all. There is a lot on Prettyqueer we publish that we don’t personally agree with. And that is not the point. The point is that we are all in this really large discussion and if you care about social change, of evolution of thought, if you care about the world being a better place for trans people, people of color, genderqueer people, poor people it requires saying a lot of things out loud that are true.
Queers used to say, “We don’t want any drag queens at the Pride parade. They make us look bad.” or “We don’t want people walking down the street in leather, they’ll make the gay community look bad.” It’s the same stuff. Also, so many people in the community hate me already, I don’t care. Nobody has to read Prettyqueer, they don’t have to click the link. To me, if I’m accountable to trans women, actually, the fact that some trans women find Prettyqueer to be a place where they feel they are represented in an honest way makes me really happy. Those are the people I care about. I don’t care about people with power and money, I really don’t. They can’t hurt me and they can’t do anything for me. They wouldn’t do anything for me even if I asked!
Morty: You’re building something that feels very strong, with Prettyqueer and Topside Press. I feel you’re going places and, honestly, knowing who you are, you’re the somebody I’d want to be going places! And I know it’s not just you, it’s Julie, Red, Riley and all the people you work with. And you’re all doing it without getting paid, correct?
Tom: We have never made a dime on Prettyqueer. The ads on the site are for stylistic reasons. I don’t know that we could ever make a dime on Prettyqueer because the readership is so poor and unquantifiable in any valuable way that I don’t think it will ever be a profitable venture. It also doesn’t really cost us anything other than in labor. And it is a tremendous amount of labor but Julie does the design and programming and Red and I edit, do outreach and find authors and that’s it. Nobody gets paid. We really wanted to be able to pay the authors but there’s just no money in it.
Morty: I have read some great work on Prettyqueer. One of my favorites is the piece Bryn Kelly did on Anna Anthropy. And as I was reading it I wondered how I didn’t already know about her!
Tom: I am extremely lucky that I have an amazing girlfriend who had made a lot of friends on the internet over the years. Between Julie and Red they have a network of friends who are really brilliant but we also find people through my network or people that see the website and become interested in submitting work. You know, the funny thing about publishing trans women… you know, it’s not a trans women website but when I travel and talk about it people will often characterize it that way or I’ll see it on the internet being characterized that way. One of the adages of feminism is the radical idea that women are people and people are just stunned to see trans women write! So much so that it can’t be anything but a blog about trans women. It’s just so outside of the realm of what people think is normal and the truth is these are just really good writers, they’re thinking and writing and saying things that are true.
Morty: Do you see what the future might be like for Prettyqueer?
Tom: We’re just going to do it for as long as we can. It actually takes a lot more effort than I thought. It’s like publishing a magazine every month but with no money. One of the things that makes Prettyqueer stand out in the world of gay blogs is the original graphics. Almost every piece that is published gets an original graphic the way a feature in a magazine would get. And that takes hours to produce and Red and Julie do all of those. I couldn’t make one if I had a gun to my head. That and editing multiple drafts and working with the writers…it’s all a tremendous amount of labor.
Morty: So, you don’t see this turning into a printed magazine…ever?
Tom: It’s possible…look, if you’re selling Volvos you don’t want to market Volvos to people who don’t have any money. So many people who are reading our website are so far on the fringes of society. And I know that sounds like a cliche thing to say but making a magazine for people who have nothing is not a very profitable venture.
Morty: I ask this to most everyone I interview: do you consider yourself a trans artist?
Tom: Yeah. I got into making art because of community. I like it because it brings people together and I like to hang out with friends and talk about cool stuff. And, it’s that way with theatre, it’s that way with books, it’s that way with Prettyqueer. Sometimes it’s an online community and sometimes it’s an offline community. I would love for it to be more an offline community but space in New York is expensive so it can’t exist in the same way here. Which is another reason why it was so incredibly abusive for WOW to kick trans people out because they effectively cancelled that conversation.
Morty: But did that not change? I saw the work of Ignacio Rivera at WOW 5 years ago….
Tom: Yeah, and there are a lot of Jews living in Germany now, too. The people who are there now are not the same people. But, certainly, there was an organic arts community and movement that was squelched. And that has informed my understanding of how arts organizing should happen in a really profound way. Which is why I think I react so profoundly with Original Plumbing. They have an opportunity that is being wasted. Because they refuse to further the conversation.
Morty: Do you see your work as part of a political movement or activism?
Tom: I don’t think I manage big groups of people very well at all. Many others in the community do a brilliant job of organizing. I feel very lucky that I have Julie and that we have a really close bond and making art improves our sex life and that’s awesome. And we have Red, who is a really dear friend of ours and Riley who I’ve been collaborating with for ten years. So, this is about community for me. I think there are others out there who will prove to be better at organizing a larger movement but hopefully I can assist that. When we go out on the streets and march, art is one of the things that we are trying to save. I think a legitimate, quality art movement is one thing that motivates people to get out on the streets. And it’s complex because you’re talking to a white trans guy who is out there making work. And it’s really difficult and something we struggle with all the time. When Riley and I were putting together the book we asked ourselves: why us? And I think that I do a lot of work to make space for other people. And I don’t know if you’re surprised by this or not but this is the first interview I’ve done about my work, ever. Nobody has ever asked me about it. I consider myself a success when I can create platforms that other people can use. And I think that’s the only way I can do it ethically because I understand that I have an extraordinary amount of power.
Morty: But this work helps you to thrive as well….
Tom: Yeah, it’s selfish because the anthology is the type of book I’ve always wanted to read! I want to read these books. And if it takes me publishing them to get people to send them to me I’ll do it!
Morty: Alright, well, we are at the end of my questions. Is there anything you want to leave the readers with?
Tom: I’m now just trying to get the word out for the new anthology. It’s really good and I want a lot of people to read it and support it.
Morty: In my own little way I will help with the marketing of your book and all further books you publish. I hope this book gets nominated for a Lambda…
Tom: I was there are this years Lambda Literary awards and I thought it was really depressing. This year, the book that won in the trans fiction category, which I am paying attention to because I want to be in it next year, was Tristan Taormino’s collection of genderqueer and trans erotica and I find that personally insulting. Frankly, I am horrified to see Lambda put an erotica book in a fiction category. You can quote me on this: Tristan Taormino doesn’t need encouragement to keep making porn. She is going to do it and it’s going to sell copies. Lambda’s job is to steward the next generation of trans writers and they are failing to do that and I find it incredibly depressing.
Morty: Well, as far as I know Lambda is run by homosexual men who don’t really know what’s going on. I mean, in 2004, when my first book was nominated, the transgender award went to a non-trans person for a photo book! They didn’t even give the award to something literary!
Tom: It’s up to us to push them to evolve. And it’s up to us to create the work that does merit the attention. And I think it’s happening. We need to continue, as organizers, to continue to make space for good work to happen. Training is really important and I’m excited to see Cooper Lee Bombardier and Carter Sickels put together the Trans/Scribe writing workshop in Portland. I think that is really valuable. That kind of stuff is extremely important. With the publishing I do we work really hard with some writers in helping them edit and we’re willing to do that because it’s really valuable. But it is also very time consuming and can be difficult at times. As Marx said, each according to his ability, to each according to his need and the trans writers are the ones most in need right now and Lambda has a responsibility to change that.
Morty: This is about my 39th interview and so many artists and writers are saying the same thing. We’re ready to bust out of this shell and take ourselves to the next level but we need a stronger network.
Tom: I remember when I was putting the anthology together I talked to Sarah (Schulman) about it and she said, “Well, don’t you have an email list of all the trans writers in MFA programs?” and I was like “No, where would I find that! Where would that come from? No, we don’t know each other, we don’t talk.” So, that’s funny. We’re getting there. We’re a lot farther behind than I thought but I’m not saying that to be depressing I’m saying that realistically. And the people who don’t think that don’t see the true problems that we are facing. Chaz Bono doesn’t understand the challenges of the trans community, not really.
Morty: We both agree that we are now building to this next level where we can say alright, this is where we are holding ourselves. We are ready to go beyond transitioning narratives and narratives that don’t speak about how complex we are as individuals.
Tom: Yes, and we owe it to the people that are going through that and I understand that the Youtube blogs about your 19th day on testosterone are valuable when it is your 19th day on testosterone and we owe it to those people but there is something beyond that. I was just reading Thomas Carlyle today for some random reason but this one quote came up that I thought was so resonant for me. It’s an article about labor and how work will save you, basically. He says, “‘Know thyself:’ - and he is debunking this whole you must know who you are stuff - “long enough has that poor ‘self’ of thine tormented thee; know thy work and do it” and that’s been my motto. We get so caught up in these identity politics of like I’m a butch, top, genderqueer, trans guy but I also wear dresses and I identify as man and I like to fuck my Daddy…the identity politics doesn’t get us anywhere, queer theory doesn’t really get us anywhere. We have to know thy work and do it. That’s all it is. And we’re doing it.
Morty: Well, it was such a pleasure talking to you, Tom. This is by far my longest interview and certainly one of my favorites. Thank you for the interview.
Tom: Thank you, Morty.

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