kitten by Olive Nuttall, Killer Rack by Slyvan Spring, Manuali’i by Rex Letoa Padget, Sewing Moonlight by Kyle Mewburn, and Marrow & Other Stories by Sloane Hong
As a trans writer and publisher in Aotearoa New Zealand, I consider every book by a trans writer published in this country a cause for celebration. I am not given enough causes to celebrate. Each year we are offered just a handful of trans-authored books, and that’s with a marked increase in recent years. I know I live in a bubble, but even still, this seems disproportionate to how many of us trans people there are living on this land.
Internationally, memoir has been the most prevalent genre of trans-authored literature. Historically, these books have been published for a cis audience, telling a linear story of transition—moving from the distress of being born in the wrong body, to a fulfilled, post-transition life. Interestingly, poetry is far and away the most prevalent genre of trans literature in Aotearoa. Various factors contribute to this, but I think a key one is that publishers already have low expectations for profit from poetry, and so they view publishing this work as less of a financial risk.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about trans publishing over the past year (let’s be real, the last ten years), and I keep wondering: why aren’t Aotearoa publishers releasing more trans-authored books?
The answer is transphobia. That’s it. That’s the end of the essay. Get out. Close the tab. Go about the rest of your day. Go and read a book by a trans person.
Just kidding. It’s a bit more complex than that. I’ve talked to publishers, academics, and trans writers themselves about this subject, and they have given me several possible answers to my question. I’ll run through some of them here.
The answer that I was given most frequently was that there just aren’t that many trans people. This didn’t ring true to me, so I decided to crunch the numbers. According to the 2023 Census data, 0.7% of Aotearoa’s population is trans. There’s good reason to believe that this number is an underrepresentation. Not all trans people are filling out the census themselves, and among those that do, it’s not safe for all of them to identify themselves as trans. But, 0.7% is the number we have, so that’s what we’ll go with.
The Publishers Association of New Zealand/Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ) reports that in 2021, 2644 books were published in Aotearoa. Therefore, if trans authors were published at a representative rate, we would see around eighteen trans books published per year.
There is very little literature about trans publishing in Aotearoa. There are no records of how many trans-authored books are being published here, but by my count, there were five in 2024 (they make up the banner image of this essay). It’s possible that there are some I’ve missed—I hope there are—but believe me, I’ve been SEARCHING. I can do basic math. I know that five is less than a third of eighteen. So, why aren’t we seeing a representative number of trans books from Aotearoa publishers?
Another answer I got was that there isn’t enough of a market for trans stories. Again, I’m not convinced by this. It assumes that trans writers only write about trans subjects, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It also assumes that cis readers aren’t interested in books by trans writers, an assumption which is quickly disproven by the fact that three of the five trans-authored books published in Aotearoa last year made it onto bestseller lists. Furthermore, many trans writers have reported that publishers don’t want their books unless they’re explicitly trans. Trans Canadian writer Vivek Shraya has been pitching a children’s book about racoons for a few years. Publishers have yet to pick it up but have said they’d be interested in her writing a children’s book about gender. She jokes that they want the racoon to transition into a beaver. Publishers can’t have it both ways. They can’t decline to publish our books because they’re trans, while only wanting trans books from us.
Some of the people I spoke to in researching this topic focused on the writers rather than the publishers, answering that more trans books aren’t being put out by Aotearoa publishers because trans people are publishing in other ways. I halfway agree with this. Trans writers are self-publishing their work. If you go to any zinefest in the country, you’ll find at least two trans people selling per-zines about their experiences. Many trans writers have email newsletters or blogs. Sascha Stronach self-published her debut science-fiction novel The Dawnhounds in 2019. Aubrey Wood did the same with Bang Bang Bodhisattva in 2023. Kay O’Neill published the wildly successful The Tea Dragon Society online as a webcomic.
Trans writers who find success with self-publishing often proceed to skip over Aotearoa publishers and sign with international publishers. All three of the writers mentioned above took this route. But it’s important to note that it’s not just trans writers publishing in these ways. Cis writers are doing all these same things, so this shouldn’t shift the demographics of what Aotearoa publishers are releasing. If anything, seeing trans writers have this kind of success should encourage our publishers to release more work by us. Even if trans writers are self-publishing more than cis writers, I would argue that isn’t a reason why Aotearoa publishers aren’t putting out our work but a result of it.
Every trans writer I asked my question answered with some variation of ‘trans people are too busy dying to publish’. Unfortunately, I think this is the most pertinent answer I got. Novelist Olive Nuttall told me that she has only read one manuscript by another trans woman and that woman died of a heroin overdose. Writer and editor Lily Holloway said, ‘It's hard to make art when you're focusing on surviving and also not killing yourself. And it's hard to have hope in a world that constantly degrades, dehumanises, and straight up murders your community.’ Poet and publisher Emma Barnes brought up intersectionality, saying, ‘So many trans people are marginalised in many other ways, either neurodivergent, or disabled or Māori ... And multiple marginalisations are compounding.’ There are many statistics I could use to illustrate these issues, but here are some about suicide. The Counting Ourselves 2018 survey on the health and wellbeing of trans and non-binary people in Aotearoa found that 37% of respondents had attempted suicide at least once in their life. This is compared to 4.5% of the general population. In addition, 12% of Counting Ourselves respondents had attempted in the last 12 months. It’s hard to negotiate publishing deals when you’re fighting for your life.
Takatāpui poet, publisher, and academic essa may ranapiri answered my question with a question of their own: ‘What urgency do our publishers have to share trans stories?’ This question gets to the heart of the problem. Publishers don’t have an economic motivation to publish trans writing. Trans readers only make up a small portion of the market and publishers don’t believe that cis readers are interested in trans writing. Not only do publishers not have an economic motivation to publish our work, they don’t have a personal motivation either. In February 2024, Diversity Works New Zealand published a report on diversity and inclusion in PANZ. None of the respondents to their survey were trans. This doesn’t mean there are no trans publishers in New Zealand; not all publishers are members of PANZ and not all members of PANZ responded to the survey (hi, it’s me! I exist!); but it does paint a bleak picture.
Looking over the answers I got to my question, it seems to me that they all boil down to one thing: transphobia. That’s it. That really is the end of the essay. Now, go support trans writers. Go seek out trans publishers. Read a book by one of the authors I’ve mentioned. Find more. Tell me about them. Share their work. Prove that there’s a demand for it.