A lot can change in a few years. In March 2020, on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, I wrote a review essay for ABR about the proliferation of trans and gender diverse (TGD) life writing. Back then, the most notable examples came from overseas, and – with the exception of established names like ABC’s Eddie Ayres (now Ed Le Broq), author of the 2017 memoir Danger Music – major Australian publishers had yet to take a chance on local trans voices.

Three years on, the publishing landscape has been transformed. During the early 2020s, Australian readers have been treated to a smorgasbord of TGD life writing, a feast that includes Kaya Wilson’s As Beautiful As Any Other, Bastian Fox Phelan’s How to Be Both, Candice Bell’s The All of It: A bogan rhapsody, Danielle Laidley’s Don’t Look Away, Ed Ayres’s Whole Notes, Madison Godfrey’s Dress Rehearsals, Ellen van Neerven’s Personal Score, Kris Kneen’s Fat Girl Dancing, the edited anthology Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (of which I am a co-editor), and my own All About Yves: Notes from a transition – not to mention essays from the likes of Sam Elkin, Jasper Peach, Vivian Blaxell, Jinghua Qian, and Oliver Reeson. Then there’s the preponderance of trans voices in the Australian poetry scene: Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Dan Hogan, Rae White, Alex Gallagher, Gavin Yuan Gao, Godfrey, van Neerven, and more. Significantly, much of this new work has been released by major publishers: Penguin, Allen & Unwin, UQP, and Text. No more is trans writing relegated to the underground press. Indeed, as I write, it’s just been announced that Hachette, one of the global ‘Big Five’, has acquired a short story collection by Sydney trans actor Zoe Terakes, to be published in 2024.