I had forgotten about the submission and was in a deeply depressive mood when the news came through.
THIS SHORT ESSAY IS HOSTED BY PRISM & PEN HERE:
My Story About a Trans Teenager Was Published in a Literary Magazine!
I’ve finally breached a milestone in a career path that I’ve fancied since the fourth grade.
I have been traditionally published in a respectable literary magazine! Not for some random thought-piece or pretentious criticism, but for my fiction — my art, in its purest and most unabashed form.
When I say respectable, I just mean that it’s a magazine that has had its featured work considered for literary awards and selected for inclusion in anthologies like “Best American Poetry” and “Best American Short Stories”.
On December 12th of 2023 West Branch Literary Magazine accepted my short story “Zayn for a Day” retitled “Harlem, 1991” for publication in print issue #105. It is told from the POV of young transsexual foundling Zayn Youngblood and follows a day in her life from waking up in the morning to sneaking off at night with her friends to rob a wealthy pedophile, and every misadventure in-between.
I had forgotten about the submission and was in a deeply depressive mood when the news came through because of some careful rumination on the state of my life. I had my failed 136,000-word manuscript (failed because I could not get an agent, publisher, or financing to produce it, but beloved still because of the impact that it had on my life), the new ambitious novel I was working on (and am still), and a lifetime of pointless and passionate dust-ridden work, all pushed aside for the new job that I was scheduled to start at a State University as a Clinical Accounts Specialist, still unpublished and unfulfilled.
The depression was severe. I felt that I was surely going to waste even more precious years of my life at another office growing comfortable, fat, old, and uninspired — losing sight of my dreams. That was terrifying to me. I had just looked up the median ages at which some of my favorite writers (Baldwin, Morrison, Wright, Steinbeck, Rechy) were first published and figured that I was still on the right track.
The acceptance email came moments after a vividly imaginative self-torture session and I hardly understood what I was reading. Then I remembered the magazine, my submission (which was an adapted stand-alone excerpt from the novel I am currently working on), and rejoiced. I cried, laughed, and paced around the broom closet of an office that I had at the time. I didn’t tell anyone right away, afraid that the editor of West Branch would divine that I was too excited and decide to pull my story, but eventually told my partner and sisters.
I filled out the contract that night but didn’t hear a word from them for another month and a half, until I received an edited copy of the story from the Editor-In-Chief with track changes, comments, and editorial suggestions to accept/reject and ignore/pursue at my leisure. It was laced with the kindest praise that filled my heart to the brim and affirmed my dedication to a life of art and literature.
It would be another two months before I received the galley proofs (the final proofs where I can see how the story will look in the magazine and for correcting any typesetting errors). It was perfect. It was my first time querying a short story, or anything other than the manuscript that I wrote in a vacuum, and I was fully prepared for months of rejection letters. I ended up having to pull the submission from a few other firms before they had a chance to respond because of West Branch’s acceptance.
Now I’ve still got another few months to wait until it’s printed (May – August 2024).
I knew that traditional publishing was a long-winded, tiresome process and that I was lucky to see my stuff inked within a year, but seven months from querying to printing still felt like a long time.
The cultural significance of a story with this kind of protagonist appearing in a mainstream magazine like West Branch isn’t lost on me either.
A friend (trans-male) impressed upon me the other day:
“This is a huge victory for you, but it’s also a huge victory for the trans community … that a story about our people — our young people, the most contentious group of us in a country attacking our very existence — is so indisputably good that it is in a literary magazine.”
I was humbled. He went on.
“It will always be a battle to get cis-het people to read about our people, to really care about us, especially when racism meets transphobia. That doesn’t mean it’s not a battle that isn’t worth fighting.”
My goal has always been to write honest, inclusive literary fiction from the eyes of my people. I have never written for the mainstream heteronormative gaze, and never will. Considering my friend’s words, I was glad that I chose not to compromise my artistic vision, or to give in to editorial suggestions that would have overly explained behaviors, slang, and queer cultural customs for the “layman”.
This is Art (my art — our art), for Us, by Us.
The event took a while to connect with me on an intimate personal level, until I was going through some old query materials for my manuscript. I realized that having my fiction traditionally published in print might inspire agents and publishers to take my work a bit more seriously, increasing my chances of being published again. And I also realized how much I had grown as an artist in that period of time.
Reading through those materials was painful. My query letter was embarrassing and I couldn’t believe that I had sent it out to so many firms — I could throw up just thinking about it — and the prose of the manuscript was shoddy compared to what I could do now. Reading back old work has always been difficult for me, but this time was especially preposterous. When you’re serious about your work, consistent, and passionate, two years makes a universe of difference. That was clear then, and is becoming clearer still.
But one thing is for sure: Prism & Pen was the first digital publication to take an interest in my fiction. The unbelievably kind praise of founder and editor James Finn gave me the confidence boost that I needed to keep writing when nothing else made sense in my life — shortly after completing my first manuscript and falling into a hopeless depression. Much like he said in a newsletter while releasing the first part of one of my serialized short stories, you saw my work there first. And, hopefully, you’ll see it again soon.
- Zayn for a Day
- It Came!
- My Story About a Trans Teenager Was Published in a Literary Magazine!
- Philadelphia, Fall 1992
- Protected: Masculine Trauma and Gender Identity
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