On a recent winter evening, Cat Fitzpatrick and Kay Gabriel were trying to decide how the former should introduce the latter, who was about to read from her new novel,”A queen in Bucks County.” Ms. Fitzpatrick said the book had her cackling on the PATH train.
Her goal had been to “make fun of other trans women in public,” Ms. Gabriel said.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick had invited Mrs. Gabriel, as well as about 100 other people, to her South Brooklyn row house for a winter salon in honor of LittlePuss Press, a small press that Mrs. Fitzpatrick started last year with Casey Plett. The two women, who met at a writing conference nearly a decade ago, came into their own as writers and editors amid what Ms. Plett calls the “translit renaissance” of the early 2010s. With first-hand knowledge of that not-so-long-ago moment, Mrs. Plett and Mrs. Fitzpatrick are now trying to spark a renaissance all their own. And like many other independent presses and publications covering New York’s literary landscape, they do so with parties that are technically readings – but are mostly just parties.
Watching the scene at this particular lecture, which also included lectures from Elena Comay del Junco and Benedict Nguyen, Ms. Fitzpatrick called it a rambunctious gathering of “drunken transsexuals.” However, there were a handful of clucking cisgenders scattered among the revelers.
“You have this line that I like very much,” Mrs. Plett said to Mrs. Fitzpatrick. “What if we involve cis people instead of asking cis people to involve us?”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Fitzpatrick. “For example, we throw better parties than you do. You will want to come.”
Named after a portmanteau of two founders’ books – Mrs. Plett’s novel “Little Fish” and Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s book of poetry “Glamourpuss” — LittlePuss is billed as “a feminist press run by two trans women.” For the founders, that means working with writers whose work would otherwise probably go unpublished, either because of the writer’s background, their lack of publishing experience, or the fact that they haven’t finished a manuscript yet.
About being transgender in America
Mrs. Plett and Mrs. Fitzpatrick serve as editors at the press, each cultivating a list of authors. Ms. Plett handles taxes, financing and other practicalities of the business, while Ms. Fitzpatrick helps with design, publicity and events.
Their duties as hosts in the winter salon reflected a complementary division of labor: Mrs. Plett, dressed in a form-fitting oxblood leather cocktail dress, worked the merch table, selling books, zines, and dropper bottles of homemade “Bitterpuss” liqueurs. Ms. Fitzpatrick flew from room to room in a flowing black lace dress, striking up conversations, refilling drinks and urging guests to “try the volcanapé” – which, for the uninitiated, was a homemade six-tiered mound of vegan pate with “rivers”. of roasted red pepper strips flowing down from the top.
Their fledgling press has published two titles: a reprint of “Meanwhile, Elsewhere,” the 2017 sci-fi and fantasy anthology the founders had previously edited for Topside Press, a trans-run publisher that has since closed, and Cecilia Gentili’s “Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist,” a letter-form memoir chronicling the author’s childhood and adolescence in Gálvez, Argentina.
An activist and artist who some may recognize from her recurring role on the TV show ‘Attitude‘, Ms Gentili said that working closely with Ms Fitzpatrick, her editor-in-chief of ‘Faltas’, had inspired great confidence.
“The fact that Cat is a trans woman was such a relief to me,” Ms Gentili said. “But there were still barriers because I’m a woman of color and a Latina and an immigrant. I mean, she’s also an immigrant, but she’s from England. It is different. I was worried: is she going to get it? And she did.”
A similar ethos of collaboration prevailed in the earlier “translit renaissance” Mrs. Plett spoke of. At that time, trans writers, editors, readers and independent publishers prompted a re-evaluation of what trans literature could be, what stories could be told, how they could be told and for whom. Topside – also based in Brooklyn – played a key role in that shift, publishing books such as Mrs. Plett’s collection of short stories “A Safe Girl to Love,” which won a Lambda Literary Award, and “Nevada”, a novel by the writer Imogen Binnie loved by prominent trans authors Torre Peters and Jackie Ess both cite them as highly influential to their own writing.
“’Nevada’ happened because Topside said, ‘Do you have anything, Imogen?’” Ms. Plett said.
LittlePuss comes at another interesting time for transliteration. “ManhuntGretchen Felker-Martin’s gory gender apocalypse novel published in February was called Vulture’s best book of 2022 and recently entered its tenth printing.
Trans fiction authoring has never been so commercially successful or at the same time so publicly controversial. From September, conservative groups and lawmakers across the country had tried to ban or restrict access to it more than 1,651 bookssome with trans characters and themes.
Ms. Fitzpatrick and Ms. Plett said they hope to have at least two new titles added to their booklist by this time next year.
The first of these will most likely be a collection of short stories by Anton Solomonik, who helps run the World Transsexual Forum, a series of open mics in Brooklyn where trans writers and artists can read and discuss their work. Because he “never submitted my writing to publishers or looked for an agent,” he in many ways typifies the kind of author Ms. Fitzpatrick and Ms. Plett want to publish: someone whose work is weird, funny, engaging — and maybe find one, for instance. difficult way to become a Big Five publisher.
There will always be parties until the next book release. The press runs on a small budget made up of personal contributions from the founders, in addition to the profits generated from the books they have sold, but Ms Fitzpatrick and Ms Plett believe charging events would be inconsistent with the scene they’re trying to build.
“If you have extra money, you have a moral obligation to buy people drinks,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.