 My name is Maxine Ponds-Webster. I'm a producer at the British Library, and I'm thrilled to welcome you all to tonight's event. Tonight we are joined by the award-winning transwriter and performer, Tralevis Alabanza. We're celebrating the upcoming release of their much-anticipated memoir, None of the Above, in which they explore what it means to live outside the gender boundaries imposed on us by society. We're especially pleased to be hosting, Travis, at this time, as the British Library has just opened a display in our treasures gallery, which is just over there, entitled Proud Words. This features magazines, memoirs and manifestos from the 1970s to 1990s, created by LGBTQ plus people, using culture to form new communities and create a new language to define themselves. It's free to visit at any time until the end of October. This evening we're in the entrance hall of the British Library. As well as all of you who are gathered here tonight, we're being joined by audiences online and in libraries in Rugby and Norwich through the Living Knowledge Network, our partnership of national and public libraries. Hello and welcome to you. Those of you who are watching online can submit questions via the form just below the video, and we'll read out as many as we can later on. On your webpage you can also buy a copy of None of the Above from the British Library Bookshop. Those of you here in the room can obviously also ask questions, just raise your hand when prompted, but please wait for the microphone so that those watching online can hear you. You'll also be able to pick up a copy of Travis's book at the Bookshop tonight, ahead of its publication next week, and have it signed. So on to our speakers. Our host for this evening is Rennie Edo Lodge. Rennie Edo Lodge is an award-winning journalist, author and podcaster who published the acclaimed Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race in June 2017. The book went on to be a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller winning numerous accolades, and in 2020 it became the first book by a black British author to top the UK book charts. I'm sure that you're all aware with Travis's work, but their impressive achievements are worth reiterating. After being the youngest recipient of the Artist in Residency programme at Tate Galleries, Travis's debut theatre show Burgers toured internationally to sold-out performances in the South Bank Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Berlin, and won the Edinburgh Fringe Total Theatre Award. In 2020 their show Overflow debuted at the Bush Theatre to widespread acclaim, and was later streamed online in over 20 countries. Travis has spoken around the world, and their writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vice, Galdem, BBC Online and Metro, and numerous anthologies including Black and Gay in the UK. Please welcome to the stage Rennie Edo Lodge and Travis Alabanza. Hello everyone. My name is Rennie, and I am delighted to share this evening with you all. It's beautiful weather out there. You could be in a beer garden, you could be in a park, but you're here with us, which means that you're dedicated to the pursuit of social justice and thinking, and I really respect that. But another person that I respect, as much as I respect you all, is Travis Alabanza, who's written this beautiful, interesting soul-searching work of narrative non-fiction, of which I've got to have an early peek of, an early read, and so I'm delighted to talk to you today about it. But first, Travis, I think you said you wanted to do a reading. God forbid. Everyone should go to the beer garden now, shouldn't they? No, afterwards. Afterwards. And when you're in the beer garden, you can discuss what you've heard today. But for now you're going to hit us with some of those words. Yeah, so I'll just say that this is from the last chapter of the book, which is titled, This Is For Us, Baby, Not For Them, and it's coming right in the end. My transness is the gift. I say it back to myself now. I know how true those words still feel. Despite the crossroads I feel are over what to do with my body and my identity, it is unquestionable that I still believe in the gift it means to be trans. Transness has taught me so much about choice, love and consent, that through reclaiming and retelling the ways we want to talk about our own bodies, we can open windows to other parts of our life. I think about what I mean when I say it as a gift. It has brought me so many friendships and so much creativity and community to my door. Transness makes it impossible not to be aware of how even the things that seem the most fixed can change. That if you are unhappy about something given to you about a choice, there is a world in which you can change it. It is a gift to know that. In a world that is fueled by capitalism that rids us of so much freedom, it does not feel obtuse to say that to know there is choice within ourselves and our body is a gift. When I think about transness being a gift, I instantly think of the best people that I know in the world and how it is not coincidental that they are trans as well. Rather, it makes complete sense. For four years of my life, I lived in a house of black trans people and although I resist the urge to homogenise us, there were certain gifts of living together that felt distinct because of our shared experiences. Whether it was the way we existed in public together, turning walks to tube stops into main stage events or our ability to bend the rules of language within our conversations about ourselves and each other, I know the depth found within our relationships was only made possible for our daring to be trans and such daring feels like a gift in a world punctuated with shallow tendencies. Like a gift of knowledge or truth, not everyone can handle what it shows or is always ready for what it may mean, yet that does not stop it from being a gift. When I think of transness as a gift, I cannot help but think in a spiritual way, partly because of the religious connotations of the word gift and knowledge, yet also because it helps ground me in something that is beyond the violence. Reminding myself that in different times and locations, gender non-conformity was not punished in the same way, that living outside gender binaries was seen by summers connecting with something higher, as a gift almost confirms to me that this current moment can change, that it is not predetermined that my transness shall be persecuted, that there is a historical power in our gift, even if others are too afraid to stare directly at it. I think about how absurd it would be to give a gift to someone every year on their birthday, only for them to smash it up in front of you every time that you do, that each year you spend hours perfecting what will be their gift, pouring love and care into how it is formed, even writing a card explaining what it means to you and them, only for them to just smash it every single time. You would not go back to them. You would not put so much effort into ensuring they received another gift. You would instead find someone else who would receive your gift with open arms, who would give you something else back in exchange, and who would celebrate all it took for you to bring such a gift to the table. I do not want to base my transness on cisgender people's definition of it. I do not want to define myself in relation only to them. I do not want to play by their rules of what my gender should look like. If my transness is a gift, let it be protected by those who will cherish it. This is for us, baby, not for them. Thank you. Thank you for that, Travis. So we were discussing that stage, like about what the theme of these questions are going to be. I have mentioned to you that as a person who writes and communicates for a living, I am really interested in words. The first question I want to ask you is about a word that you use that comes up quite a few times in the book. It is the word liminal. I understand the word liminal in relation to a liminal space to essentially mean somewhere that you are on your way to somewhere. This is not a good explanation. It is a place that you are in that is taking you somewhere. So, for example, I would use being on the tube or being perhaps on a plane or an airport as a liminal space. It is essentially a place of transition supposedly taking you from A to B. I am really interested in your definition of liminal as it relates to the subject matter of none of the above and let us know how it relates to your being on binary. I am so obsessed that I am starting with this question. I have been craving something about the words in the book for so long. I didn't need to drink two wines. I think for me what I think about when I think of liminal and why I wanted to put it so distinctly in the book is obviously trans as an umbrella term but something I wanted to write specifically about was how to exist. The question I am asking in the book is can I survive as a visibly gender non-conforming person that is deciding that I am not man or woman. Is that possible to still survive as that in 40 years? I realise that one of the main reasons why that was struggling is because of how people project onto you that this can never be permanent. This has to be something that you are moving towards. This is your half-way house. Even if they understand non-binary in theory as an aesthetic or as your perceived appearance and your gender, they assume that you are finishing something up. I feel like when you are in a liminal space in gender you aren't awarded the same privileges of when you are in a static space. It feels like you can't access certain spaces until you choose to make something definite. For me it was really important to distinguish the type of trans I was talking about because I feel like although all types of trans people are harassed and abused systemically and personally in different ways when you are occupying a space that people can't place you receive a specific type of violence that I felt wasn't spoken about but also when you then go out and look for that support from others in your community sometimes you can face a lack of understanding. It's so interesting because we talk about different services and support and how to include trans people into already existing services but what happens if you exist in a space beyond the language of those services and still need them? Those are the kind of questions I was asking like when I'm 30 or 40 I'd be tired of being outside but also I see Limonau as a place of in between and a place of movement and then I was feeling like I was in this static of lockdown and suddenly it almost felt like this sounds weird but it felt like my body was still charging somewhere forward and I was like is this intentional? Am I wanting to move somewhere else? Or do I feel like I'm being forced to go somewhere else because of someone else? Because when I kept reading that word, Limonau I was thinking are you going somewhere? Do you know what I mean? Is that the intention? Because I think what's really interesting about this book is that it sits in the questions, right? It sits in the questions, it doesn't really try to... You're not out here setting out a stall, do you know what I mean? Right, and to me I think that word Limonau also, at least for me, it could be my own personal projection but comes there's an insecurity, right? Because there isn't that... I'm here, that's settledness, right? This book was 100% written from doubt. I say that as I think the dedication in the book says this is dedicated to all people questioning unsure in doubt and there was a version of this where I didn't plan for this book to be like this. I'd say it in the prologue but I thought the book was going to kind of be that tell all this is how you understand non-binary people, a chapter on pronouns, maybe a chapter on email signatures and a chapter on blue hair dye. And I started writing that book because I thought that would be the book that people need or want and then conveniently at the same time I was having a gender crisis for the first time in a long time. I've been out as gender non-conforming for 10 years and I felt very not limonau in my gender and suddenly I was using the advance from the book to get laser hair surgery and I was like, hold on a minute this is the same person that used to comment on bathroom walls saying I'm bearded and I'm faggot and proud and suddenly I was like I want to change. But you had an advance and that gave you options. Money drops into the account. Money drops into the account but it's real, right? Trans healthcare requires money in this country or waiting for a million years and the first thing I did when I had the privilege of a lump sum was go I'm going to burn off all my hair and I didn't even think. And I was like hold on a minute I'm not even thinking about something that's incredibly painful and also like I'm not good at pain threshold even with people I know, let alone a stranger. And I suddenly had all this doubt and I messaged my editor at the time and said I don't think I can write the book telling everyone what non-binary is because I'm not sure in 10 years if I'm going to be here like this space. Instead I'm going to spend some time speaking to my friends and seeing how they feel about their gender and what I learned is that so many of us were having these internal battles questioning our validity but felt like because of the current conversation around transness I couldn't say that in public because of how scrutinised transness was we couldn't question ourselves out loud we had to come robust and clear and not liminal and I said I've got this chance to write something from a place of doubt which is a natural human emotion that we all feel that transness shouldn't be stripped of and I get to put that out there so that was the choice. So I'm glad that it feels like it's from a place of doubt because it definitely is. Sometimes you just know what you don't want and that is okay to move from that position so it's kind of come up in your reading and in that answer about I feel like one of the themes in None of the Above and you can challenge me because it's your writing at the end of the day but I came away from it thinking that one of the main themes is the idea of trans being trans essentially being an imposition do you know what I mean? You write about and I think it's quite pertinent that you mentioned that the crisis came in lockdown because you write about this imposition essentially being in relation to others in relation to the dominant values of society am I right in thinking that's the main theme? Absolutely. I'm a good reader. Definitely are. Absolutely. I don't know about you but sometimes I write from a place of what I think is missing in literature not always, I don't think that always births the best stuff but you read a lot and you go it's missing this, it's missing that and I felt like with this one thing I was feeling when I was reading the trans nonfiction that was coming out this is like pre-2020, 2018-17 rightfully so a lot of it was about this personal journey of finding yourself and everything was about the journey you go on to accept yourself and that was great and uplifting but that wasn't my narrative my narrative was I was fine and then you came along I was living free as a gender non-conforming kid and person and then I met adults and then I met systems and then I met structures and suddenly I was thinking about gender I was lucky enough to live in a family where my choices weren't policed heavily and so I wasn't thinking about wearing a heel or wearing a dress or if I was a boy or a girl I was just seen for my personality and my being I then go to school and suddenly it all changes and suddenly I have these feelings of wrongness in my body and it's not the same for everyone and who knows it could be a chicken or egg but for me I was like I think it does a disservice to us as a community of trans people but also as a wider society to take the onus completely off of the other person to put it completely on transness personalises an issue that has to be in relation gender is relational in everyone not just trans people we're constantly gender is a relational project but also more than that I think it lets cisgender people off the hook because it makes my transition wholly a personal thing whereas actually if cisgender people left us alone our genders would look very different our gender expression would feel different our access to ourselves would feel different and so I wanted a book that really said my transition is not just in relation to me it's transitioning away from you or it's transitioning around you or it's transitioning to deal with you is to do with you so it came I feel like when I was writing that question I was thinking about the rigidity of the gender binary and how that is the imposition yeah so one thing you're a performer right that's a day job well it hasn't been recently no I'm triggered I mean I'm here you've had to have your head down it's been a day job it's been a night job I think writing is so I mean I saw you perform once at Glastonbury P pandemic and I was blown away I thought about the fact that the job of writing is very solo it lends itself to introversion and so you say you haven't been performing that much you've been working on it typing away but I'm really interested I think in terms of you being a performer and how others relate to you so you tell this really fascinating story in the book I feel like this is your first London book event so I can ask you to retell it if this was like your 8th event I'd be like I'm not going to ask you've got the fresh one can you tell us about Steve? Steve if you're out in the audience I changed your name so I say in the book I changed your name to Steve but he did look like Steve and at first the thing about Steve I used to gig back in 2016-17 I was working mainly in cabaret and club circuits and I was performing 5 days a week with a lot of different shows and different clubs and Steve would be at every single one and he was a straight dude now I later got that confirmed but I held my hands up I did make some assumptions he was straight I looked at his shoes and he would just sit at the side of the stage and watch me silently every single show and then just leave and he stood out and I couldn't tell if he liked it but then every now and again he would go and I'd be like and it kind of became like a little thing between me and him I'd see him at the bar and I'd be like is he like flirting then I felt like I was a bit of attracted to him but we'll process that in another book and then he started talking to me after the show but he'd just come up to me and say hi I'm Steve then he'd say straight he'd be like hi I'm Steve I'm straight I'm sorry which correct response and then he would run away and I would talk about him all the time with my friends because I just wanted him to stay I was so thankful one that like by this point I didn't have any regulars so I was like I'll take any regular I can get and his energy was gorgeous and then one day he turned up with who later revealed was his wife I did feel a prang of jealousy which I don't know again another book and he shows me as nails instantly and it was the weirdest interruption cos I'm like this guy's never spoken to me he shows me as nails and I kind of interrupts him and goes this is Steve and I'm his wife's amount of fur and he's painted his nails because of you this is because of you I had that response first definitely I was like ah this is beautiful like what a great impact and I talk about this in the book does that phrase ever get weird going to me no it's fine you own it now it's about it in the book it was art first and it was beautiful and it was interesting happened where I learned that they've been debating whether he can paint his nails and this is the language we've debating whether or not he can do it for the last five years we've been having all these conversations in our marriage and we're deciding whether we could allow it right and suddenly my heart like sinks and they're still smiling and fleeing proud and they walk off and I don't see them at my shows ever again although I'm sure I've got to do bigger venues now but I think it's a really important I put that in the story of the book because I think it sums up really clearly the gender binary in lots of ways one it shows the joy that gender nonconformity can bring to other people it shows that when gender nonconformity is allowed to exist and be celebrated and be lauded it has a positive effect on other people's freedom that actually cisgender people gain autonomy from trans people being free and that the more trans people and that the more trans people are allowed to be free we'll see a side effect of other people's freedom that freedoms contagious that when we see other people make choices about things that we think are unmovable suddenly we open up to a world of possibilities that's the positive right Steve Payne's nails showed me that unlike I was meant to believe that transness is a bad plague that actually transness spreads in a beautiful way and in a positive way but the side effect of that was showing that when you make conversations and choices for your autonomy under the gender binary it's not just trans people that are punished that cis men's acceptance and romance and love is conditional on them performing malehood perfectly right and that shows that the gender binary isn't just harming trans people it's robbing all of us of the chance to be more free Steve had to leverage his own choice in order to still have love to me I had to put that in the book because it was both confirming of what I believe about myself but also depressingly confirming about what I believe the effects on other people I think the media has done an incredible successful job of isolating trans issues as an us for them situation right instead of saying that actually trans people are being honest about the illness of a gender binary right and that trans people are showing the reaction and the bravery to react to something that is harming all of us and that's why Steve and Samantha is important and if they do show up or if he is watching I want them to know I do say it in the book but the story is told with such love and such thankfulness and he bought me three drinks over two weeks so thank you Steve I think that's really important I also thought it was interesting that before Steve identified himself as like straight and cis you'd sort of made that assumption on signifiers right and I think it's really like you know that speaks to the gender binary as well and the fact that like you know what does the mind do like reaches for reference points you know Birkenstocks I mean I'm wearing them but we brought them back is this a straight thing I don't think it is you better put that one up and it's all good this event's not about me so you wrote something here's a line that I pulled from the book that I think very much resonated with me you wrote we sacrifice a complexity that is within all of us in an attempt to appease a binary that we believe keeps us safe and when you wrote about Steve and his wife you used the phrase victim of the gender binary and I thought what does it mean to be a victim of the gender binary in that way yeah I think I intentionally used that word again to kind of hop back on what I just said to a I knew I wasn't silly to the context that this book is coming out in I know you try and write to I don't know if you had this when you're writing your work that sometimes it's helpful to just imagine you're writing this for yourself but obviously you have to then go this is going to be read by these people these things and we're in this country at this time so I was really aware that as a trans author I was writing in this anti trans climate and I was aware that this wouldn't be a book that might be where my other previously self published works are in like a queer safe space library which is feeling safe today thank you um but I knew that context and so I knew that I wanted to make certain points really clear and the main point I wanted to make clear was that we have been duped to think that trans people are the only one suffering and that actually like organisers from the past I was drawing inspiration from organisers of different marginalized groups solidarity is crossing solidarity is saying my issues your issues solidarity is showing all the ways that we're both struggling under the same system and so for me to use the phrasing victim of a gender binary it's saying we're all in this and this book is explaining how I'm specifically being harmed by this but this language hints to you that you are as well so instead of us being separated and instead of us being at each other why don't we share resources because we're being harmed by the same thing the resource that helps you might also help me or we can work to share resources right and it really was when I read when I'd written this I imagined like my mum reading it my auntie's reading it old school feminists reading it and wanting them to feel like I was saying hey I'm trying to show that this is a thing between us and to show that trans people aren't unique in that we are facing violence from gender and that although we have an individual experience that when we start realising that we're all being harmed from a similar thing just at different angles maybe we can create some actual change I think that's a very generous and open-hearted approach and I can tell you that that's not an approach that I would ever take to try and find common ground with some of these people who say awful things so I really admire that I think, look I don't have that hope on the streets if someone comes to me on the streets I haven't got that hope but I had time with this and I think about a book it does last forever you know that when you're writing it this is going to be here in 10 years maybe my rage won't be here in 10 years so what other emotions do I want to say and I think it sounds cheesy as hell but I wanted some hope that I do believe that there's more bringing us together in solidarity than there isn't and that I've spent loads of time reacting to all the noise about transness and that wasn't bringing me any more joy and of course it's quite exhausting it's so exhausting in it I love the hard way and it leads to nowhere it just doesn't lead anywhere and the good thing about writing in solitude you mentioned like writing as a solitude I found it so hard you're writing a performer I kept on being like to my flatmate at the time to give you a monologue inspired by the book to give you a monologue inspired by the book to give you a monologue inspired by the book free words, first word none but the good thing about writing in solitude is I'm not seeing all of those people they're not around me I was in my home so I could almost build this idyllic scenario where they listened and write to that and if they don't that's their choice for that and also I think sorry I'm going on no this is your event to go on that's why we're here but also I didn't just I didn't really just write first this swede for me the book also had to really speak to my community and I think if I was always I had to reach a hand in generosity because then the feeling of this sounds so corny but I do believe this in writing the feeling of hope goes through it and the feeling of when I'm talking about really negative things I feel grabbed to something and I knew that this book would hopefully bring joy and a sense of confirming feels to trans people but I also knew that some bits would be hard because I haven't ignored the violence and so I needed an energy that would pull them through the read as well absolutely I thought it was quite interesting I decided not to ask you about the media climate because it's this is about your work you know caricatures of what it means to be trans in Britain from a bunch of transphobic columnists you know but I thought it was quite you know interesting how you wrote about the threat of physical violence you know the ongoing rhetorical violence that's happening in the British press and how you know you confronted your own sort of disconnection and disassociation from those moments because it is really hard to sit down and talk about and write about some of the worst things that have happened to in your life and I'm not equating the threat of rhetorical violence to the same as the threat of physical violence but I've definitely been through something similar where it's really quite devastating because the aim of it is essentially to trash a reputation and I really admired that because it is really difficult to get that out and there's no institutional support your publisher doesn't pay for therapy to help you move through that that painful writing I wondered how you managed to do it like what did you lean on any resources or any people white wine no no no I think the main obviously there's a whole chapter where I use a chapter called children sacrifice to appease the trans lobby which is a headline written by Janice Turner in the Sunday Times newspaper in 2017 and I was the subject of the article and that was about me getting kicked out of a changing room in top shop when I was very young and it went viral and da da da da da and I have to glaze over it now because I went in and chose to go in during the book but when that all happened I was receiving lots of requests to talk on good morning Britain to respond and become a thinking talking hand and I declined every single thing and never spoke about it really like spoke about it in my own way in my work but never had a public platform and I'm so glad I declined it at the time because I didn't want to I was busy being in a play I wanted to be known for my work but here I had the chance to do it on my own terms and do it with time and I felt like if I said it and gave a whole chapter to it two things could happen one maybe I don't need to write about it again because it kept on appearing in bits of my work in burgers it gets like a line and I was like oh this clearly needs to happen let me just give it space and then the second thing that I could do that I think you can only do in the arts is you get to imagine alternative endings and you get to imagine different autonomy so again spoiler alert but in the book I cut up the headline and I re-cross out words to have a different ending that I believe better sums up what's happening in that thing and I get to speak back to her because that was the thing I was 20 years old and she's a 40 plus woman in the column it was cruel it was really mean and I didn't have the resources to fight back I'd never been in the press before that was my first time really experiencing any attention I didn't have I'm sure if it happened now I didn't have access to calling up someone who might know a PR person or calling up a friend who has been through press too but you know I was 20 years old and I didn't know anyone in those places and I was like what's going on and this chapter was really healing I mean it's the only time I still get really it's still real it's real because no matter how much you write about it no one should go through that and certainly not in the name of writing to apparently another writer it was just so upsetting but then let me do the shade back how I know how with a solid piece of writing you know she gets torn a new one but all done through legal ok how much time we've got left ok this is good my final question and we've got time please have question that was desperate actually oh no get the cops turning people ok so I think related to what we've just discussed you know we've spoken about a few things during our conversation right like I think you're a really fascinating person to talk to because you know as a performer like so much of your work is about creative self-expression right like in your in your performance like in your fashion sense in your writing and I think that like creative self-expression is part of gender right but it's not all of it I was discussing this with my partner today before I came down and I was like I want to ask Chavish a question about creative self-expression because it's linked and I feel like I'm really interested in the idea of like your creative self-expression being perceived by the dominant society as a provocation as a challenge because it's something that I experience with my work and I just feel that for example a white nature writer who's doing their work expressing themselves creatively through their passions doesn't get their work seen as a provocation well actually maybe a climate change a little bit in the same way and I picked that up really I've picked it up very strongly like in your book like the idea of essentially being seen as a provocation simply because of who you are and how you want to express yourself creatively and I wondered if you wanted to say a little bit more about that because you know in an ideal world creative self-expression would be encouraged it would be considered pedestrian and benign and we would all just enjoy it but there is something so I think suffocating about constantly be seeing as a provocation that was a bit of a long question not to gas you up that that was the best question ever I'm so glad we're ending on it because I feel like what gets missed out in conversations around transness and our transition is that we're carving ourselves in front of the world that takes work but also it takes skill it takes craft and it takes power and aesthetic is that and it's devalued as this kind of fluffy thing that doesn't have way or is for them rather than like a deep personal commitment to yourself to bring joy and to bring a self-empowerment that isn't flimsy the least flimsy for self-empowerment for such a flimsy word but the end of the day is that I make a choice every day to say despite what I'm going to experience outside on the streets for looking like this this choice is worth more and the joy that this feels is worth more than what I might experience that should be given joy and celebration not punishment we should be able to learn from trans people doing that but also aesthetic and creative self is the only way I found my voice you know like class is such a big thing for me in this book right there's a whole chapter about the counsellor's day and I feel like part of the thing of growing up on a counsellor's day and I don't want to harp on too much about it but because I feel like the way we talk about Britain in class it just becomes this stereotype in our image and there's so many nuances that get missed but part of the thing of going up on a counsellor's day is my experience was that often you can feel like that is the only place you could ever be and that is the only place you will ever be and that the brick houses and walls will just carry on going for ever and ever and ever and ever and it wasn't until I found creative expression and choice to how I adored myself and how I present I remember editing my school uniform when I was younger and just like getting a huge black flares and like a cropped polo shirt doing the jump over the top a million bang doors how did the school oh they said you're wearing a million items over the school uniform and I said I'm over here I was I loved an excuse to bunk so I was like it's either this or not me and they eventually got bored but doing that it was so weird but it told me that I had options beyond what I was told I didn't get that from books I didn't get that from hearing another trans person speak I didn't get that from online or anything I got that from creative expression on myself and so I'm so glad you picked up on it because we can get lost in all the seriousness of like the head stuff and forget that this is serious too but it's also fun I love looking like this I fought for my book to be pink I fought for my book to look chic and I will be wearing pink at every single book tour and that will seem frivolous and it will also bring me such comfort enjoying fun and like not everything else can do that in the world yeah definitely but it is linked to the head stuff to some extent because there's that I think as people who and I hesitate to call myself a marginalised person now my class has changed but you know my position my political perspective is still somewhat marginalised right so I mean very much so I mean we've got candidates for Tory leadership saying they've got to shut it down but I think it's quite you know it's linked to the head stuff because not everybody's creative self-expression is seen as a threat and a challenge to the state's quo you know Taylor Swift can just write her songs and perform them and that's her you know she's a talented songwriter and that's her genuine self-expression of how she wants to express herself creatively and like no one's busy saying that it's an abomination it has to end but for those of us who come from a perspective that's marginalised you don't have that freedom you can do it but be ready for the avalanche of you know oh well why are you doing that for obviously you're doing it for the dominant you know you know the people in dominant society you know they pick it up as an invitation to lean in with their own fears you know and their own projections and that's how it's linked to the head stuff because it's we don't have that freedom we don't have that freedom in the same way and that's why I think I ended on the chapter order wasn't always the same but I think that's why I ended on the chapter that says this is for us baby not for them because they'll try and make it as if this is all for them but then when I walk down the street now sometimes you have to play games to get through it right and sometimes I go let me imagine that this is for any other GNC person that sees me and nods and gets it back imagine that this is to inspire that person or to nod at that and it changes your whole shift because you're like this can still be other people that feel good it can be for you and then it can also be other people that feel good but it's about who it's for and that they can control a lot of things but they can't control what shoes I'm gonna wear they can't control what outfit I'm gonna boss in and I'd like to see Taylor pull this off okay we're really doing good for time we've got plenty of time for questions so I hope the cogs in all of your minds have been turning and you have insightful things to contribute to our discussion I think we've also got some questions coming from the internet so I guess has anybody got a question okay we've got some hands I'm gonna go to elephant t-shirt first and let's keep it to a question of not a statement so you know the phrase have to see it to be it so in what you just answered for any now you were saying how creative expression and you were doing that in school whereas how did you find it to know who you were that early as opposed to having to wait to see lots of other trends and gender non-conforming people to give you the power to do that does that make sense? oh yes a brilliant question thank you elephant t-shirt lovely t-shirt I like it I guess I don't know because I can't compare it to the other option but what I will say is that I wasn't doing it with a knowledge of transness I was just doing myself and it wasn't about at that point it really and again this is probably different for lots of different trans people but for me my experience was I wasn't thinking anything internally it was really I was on simple vibe I was like this looks good on me this feels good I wanna wear this I was like this school uniform is dead how can I liven it up and I think it was both good and bad I wanna end on the good so bad in the sense that I wasn't quite bashful because maybe I didn't understand there was a sanctity to it so maybe I was interacting with other trans and queer people that were older than me and they were trying to reach out because they were seeing all the signifiers and I was like whatever I was playing on the football team at the same time she was complex so I wasn't playing attention to that so I think it made me a bashful person I was also experiencing so much violence but wasn't processing it because I was like no grounding of why it was happening because I really was oblivious but good in the sense that it meant that I knew that's possible to have and it meant oh that was me sorry it meant that I can always imagine a future where we're less bothered because I was less bothered and that it does also mean that I think I relate to our community in a certain way I think that obviously I say our community is completely multifaceted all of those preferences but sometimes we can get bogged down by things that I don't always feel necessarily aid us I think we can sometimes get bogged down in how we define ourselves to each other how we relate to each other consistently through certain languages and language and signifiers and we can forget that to me our transness is like a verb it's an action, it's a doing thing and when I remember me in the past it was an action and this felt the best when it was an action it didn't feel the best when I was theorising myself in relation to someone else and to be honest it had to do this book that was the gender crisis so I was like I'm thinking about this too much and I'm not doing and the me and the schools was just doing and so my advice for a lot of young trans people when I'm asked, that's not you by the way I'm looking at you like not that but like when a young trans person oh you are young, you can never hey babes you can never know so I think that when I go into schools and stuff and trans young people ask me like similar questions I just tell them to try out safely somewhere wherever that context is try before thinking and you'll figure that stuff out and maybe that works for some people but that's what I hold on to to that younger self is I was just doing and it felt so good a lot of the time, of course there was a lot of shit but like sorry sorry library network sorry library network at hope sorry mum but it felt good yeah it felt good brilliant I feel like we had a question over here okay yes and remember question not statement oh yeah hi will you mention that your cover is pink and I was actually going to ask a question about the cover yeah you obviously have a way with words sorry statement no it's alright as long as there's a question card I've got to bring you to everyone did you have any choices other than the pink choice for the cover and kind of what went into it and yeah and how did that shape I guess the themes of the book without giving maybe too much away I just looked at my agent to be like is this the time I give the politician answer look hey look what I've learned about publishing which is beautiful is that it takes a bigger village than I even thought to make a book and I wish something that I hope and the paperback or something is that we can do what I've seen other books doing and publish the credits of all the people that make a book in this and I didn't I was a bit blind to that I think before in publishing I knew that that existed in theatre and there's just so many steps in that book that I didn't know and you write the book first and then the cover conversation happens and it's a conversation with a lot of voices because there's a lot of people that care about the book at that point aesthetic is like my vibe I love this was never going to be a cover that I wasn't happy about because images so important to me and it's such a powerful tool there were other versions and I think the common I'll say is all the versions came from a good place but maybe they symbolised the same thing that I tackle in the book the book that we think it's going to be and then the book that I actually write and I think that in cus trans literature isn't new but trans literature in this current moment in this canon in this publishing world is new in this form it's about trusting that the reader can find what you want to find like sometimes I think we think that trans people have to always be in a place of education so maybe some of the earlier versions were doing a lot of that whereas if I'm honest I wanted something just bold, cheeky like cute and you know obviously the box when you think of none of the above you think of the box so that had to be in there but to be honest this is my favourite colour and also that like there's this thing oh it's none of the above do we need to pick a gender neutral colour do we need to pick something that pink is obviously pink like with the history but I was like baby pink is pink with the history and pink is, it's not going to be blue but yeah I can't really lie I just picked this cover was obviously like designed by it and we went back and forth and the dance line is incredible but also it just looks hot it's cool to hold okay have you got any questions from this side cus I'm trying not to forget you guys over there none okay well keep the cock turning oh okay we do hi earlier you were speaking about reimagining and you spoke about the liminal like being in a liminal space and I wondered if you were to reimagine what would that liminal space be like for society at wider wow such a good question it's a vast one it's a big question I think I'll say that the main thing I was imagining and hoping for when writing this where I would experience safety and others would as well is a liminal space where you're allowed to change your mind and contradict yourself and that you're allowed to change into a version of yourself that would disagree with past you and then change back to past you that change was seen as like a natural and celebrated thing rather than a feared thing and that change wouldn't feel as heavy right I think that we would all breathe lighter if the choices we made around gender could be lighter as well and if the choices we made didn't have to last forever or they could and we could change our mind and so for me I want us all to be in a space of transit and a space of change and a space of never staying in one spot because that's kind of where we already all are it's just for some reason that we have to lie and say we're not and so yeah the liminal space I imagine is when we're all just in flux it's interesting what happens when your cis friend hangs out with loads of trans people for a week suddenly they'd be drawing on their mustache one day, changing it up the other going I think I'm they she I think I'm she slash they they'd be giving the little pronoun mix up it's on the fourth day in the pronoun circle and they're like I think I'm actually she slash a little hint at them and you're like bitch yeah step into it and then maybe next week or not and like how free is that because it all kind of mean stuff but it also kind of doesn't and I think my liminal space would like take it serious in the sense of take what you believe serious and also know that this is all quite silly are there any internet questions oh god no anyone from reddit and then we'll get back to the to the crowd I think this follows on from that word you mentioned canon I think this book is definitely going to be part of the LGBT canon for a very very long time which is really exciting but we have a question which is your who when you were writing this book who was your canon that you referred to what books before which authors before were you thinking of James Baldwin like I remember my brother who's put the A in Ally giving me James Baldwin books when I was like 15 and it like changing my whole world and changing everything and just making me feel like there was a space in form to change I think that nonfiction and fiction is again if we're doing none of the above it's not really a binary that makes sense I don't look at nonfiction writers as not also being storytellers and writing and changing form and I felt like James Baldwin does that like so beautifully some of the work that you read of his that feels like fiction is actually like deeply historical the same with like Bell Hooks' work as well I read a lot of Bell Hooks in lockdown reread and I feel like her work as well is consistently telling you don't get comfortable with what you think this form is and yeah I think LGBTQ issues aside it's actually a reason why I picked this publisher is that when they were comparing the books and the quotes they weren't just picking it based off of like who I look like or like what other identities I shared they mentioned books that like after reading my sample they mentioned books that were doing something with form that I felt was linked to this and so yeah definitely James Baldwin I'm like I think he made me a writer yeah that feels a bit funny to say but I think he did yeah Bell Hooks we really lost a legend you know RIP we've got a question here at the front and then I'm going to come to you in the back you're next Hey Travis I remember seeing you many many many many years ago in maybe Goldsmiths or somewhere like that you were performing very nervous it was very new but you were still as amazing and I remember you saying something like you wanted to to exist you wanted to congregate this earth without I think you said without teaching you just wanted to exist you wanted to feel joy in the way that people who are maybe gender conforming do so in terms of your book are we going to get any kind of fiction work where we've got perhaps trans trans and non binary gender non conforming folk who are waking up brushing their teeth smiling finding love skipping hopping or are we going to have more I don't want to say this is teaching but there is an element because even I as trans non binary person I learned from you so any fiction Do you mean in this book or future work? Future babe? Oh babies I hope The thing about fiction is I think it takes longer and I'm trying to write maybe I've not got another book on the go I can't lie you've got to take a break after this I respect that it's not everyday produced produced but I can't You need to live life, you need input in order to have output You need trans joy Well I'm writing for like TV but they've got to say yes but that's comedy that's where I get to see my comedy in my shows, I think theatre is where I do a lot of that I don't know if I'll be writing fiction any time soon because I think I didn't realise how exhausting the process would be of like the book thing was hard but then like it was two years, it's a long process I text all my author mates that like churn one out like every year and I was like I don't know are you alright? Who's your ghost writer? Do you have one? But I think look I've got a really amazing comedy series that I'm writing at the moment for TV they just got to want it Beautiful evil eye Obviously we're all rooting for you but sometimes I'm worried about the forces Yeah that is true I've got a shit comedy series coming out but yeah I think that my fiction space has always been on the stage and other areas and I think that's where it'll be rather than the book for now I really want to write a kids book eventually that's where I want to go Stan your lane, is that what you said? Is that what you'll do it? I want to write a kids book after your kids book but yeah not for now you just get my email on fiction I feel like also Travis is only 26 years old we're talking long career Let me take some time off I feel like I don't know but you've still got so much to offer us Yeah definitely Life is long I know when I got to slow it down a bit No you don't have to slow it down but I'm excited to see what comes next Question over here I promised you that you were next Hi Forgive me if I jumble this up I'm quite nervous Me too You just speak so delicately about the relationship with self your relationship with self and I feel like sort of being the disrupter or like the canon can be a load of responsibility and I just I'm so impressed and bewildered by how wonderful it is to hear someone kind of be led so much by self but I wonder like what what gave you I don't know the moment of I want to bring this to the collective or I want to like take this and write this book and bring it forth and yeah Thanks for such a nice question I like the statement before because it builds me up a bit See I'm in favour of statements as long as there's questions That was a good statement I want to give you a really good answer but I'll be honest I don't think is intentionally about that stuff I really just focus on what I need to make and I don't really focus too much if I'm honest about what could or couldn't be the impact and sometimes that can disappoint people in an answer but it's not because I don't care and like I'm really grateful but I do just think it sometimes makes stale art if you think too much about this imagined impact because it also individualises you in a way that doesn't really make sense there's loads of artists that are saying what I'm saying in lots of different ways and so I'm just making and saying it in this way and I think growing up when I became an artist I was around like the DIY queer performance scene I was introduced by, I was thinking about it this morning this incredible artist called Jacob Rejoice who was part of an amazing punk scene called Screaming Tonel and I remember it kind of felt like surreal trip but I wasn't on drugs mum and she's not here but she might be tuning in live she's really obsessed with this book tour and they brought me into this garage in south London and I'd first moved to London and there was all these performers like doing all these different things jumping up on the mic, jumping off saying similar things but in different ways and I started to be like oh I could do this and I think if your art is born in a collective experience you never think too much about your individual impact because I'm thinking about so many artists when I'm writing I'm just like oh this is my form and then this is their form and this is theirs and this is theirs and this comes out in the world and everyone else decides to spill it up into this is a book and this is theatre and this is music and this is this but if you come from a collective that was moulding all those things you don't think of your work as like doing one thing over someone else you just think it as this is my skill set I'm quite good at speaking in front of people my mix of probably privileges campy aesthetic and humour meant that other people then did it on a bigger scale and this is my way I would be shit at doing it at an underground club in south London steel because I'm afraid of crowds now so you just have different skills and this is my skill and yeah I don't know if that answered your question but I don't really think of myself in that way I think you just got to make the art first that's it really you just make the art first OK do you have any internet questions OK our internet person we actually have a question from rugby library I thought you meant, sorry I thought you meant from a rugby team I was like OK Bristol's haunting me OK sent me this might be like choosing a favourite child but of all the work and all the forms of work that you've done so far all your performances and now this writing do you have a kind of favourite experience of a favourite piece that you've done it's none of the above to buy online and after this before we I should give that answer but I'll be honest this was really hard to write and I'm not reaping the emotional award yet because this is the first event I'm still processing it I'll be processing it for a long time so I'd be lying if I said this one this is really cool though but it's got to be burgers like that changed my whole time I see my director in the audience Sam, it just changed my life and it made me think that I could do this for a long time and the show that keeps on giving it's just been signed to there's going to be someone else acting on it in Australia now performing it and I got to see the world I got to have loads of fun I got to believe that I was an artist it gave me a lot of privileges as well it meant that I could work full-time as an artist it's burgers all day every day but close second is none of the above that was a really good internet question it fucked me up didn't it I'm going to go to you and then we'll go to you because we've got loads of time for questions generous British library but can I get a time check from any member of staff because hmm okay so can we be can we still go for like 20 minutes or okay keep thinking of questions people okay let's go on hi I really love Travis how you talk about joy and I think it resonates with a lot of people because I think joy is one of the main things we search for when we're figuring out this whole gender thing I know I certainly do and I wanted to ask what the most joyful thing about being who you are is or what one of the most joyful things for you is my shoe collection no no no sorry sorry that was a knee jerk honestly like the people you meet I really think that anytime you feel too disempowered it's like a LGBTQ person with the state of the world it's very easy too it's very easy to look at our government and feel all these things and then you just have to go to a straight wedding and you're like oh I've picked the right side actually if there was a side I think I went to a queer wedding recently I was like oh this is what's up you know shout out to Tom and Shug's but I think that it's the people I am a sum of all the people I've met and queer people are like so cool because that autonomy I'm talking about in the book every queer person I've met has their own journey to that autonomy too because they've had to and then so to be surrounded by people that have had to fight for their autonomy is like both overwhelming and no wonder the queer drama is so sizzling but it's also like so energising and inspiring I feel like a smarter person because I'm surrounded by queer people I feel like a kinder person definitely feel like a better like lover and friend because of queer people so it's the friends every single time you know every time and even not just friends I feel like queer people I don't know because I'm not straight maybe straight so you can say you do this too but like I feel like queer is also no more people or like we just like you know like we don't rely our definitions of friendship and family is just not bound in the same way so there's loads of people in the room here that I can spot and yeah I might not text them like every day but they're here and we like love each other and we like know we do and that feels specifically like queer and it's quite emotional actually because they're here at this thing and it's not a stranger but it's also not I guess a friend so that must mean it's just like a queer family member that you like have a bond to and you know so that's the tea I'm not going to be emotional every first event is the first event it's a bit wild so that's what's going on we're going to go for one more question okay great fabulous by the way sorry I'll take like two seconds but I will be at the book signing and I will do that that will be fun and nice I just got a lack to take a two set of course will stories of a queer brown bloody kid ever make a comeback hahaha that was okay my friends are really stepping up clearly for context stories of a queer brown bloody kid was something I tried to get published when I was like 19 it was like children's but actually illustrated the original version by my friend Denny in the room I guess you know what what I'm learning about my work is it reappears in lots of different forms all the time and I think if there ever was a children's story it would definitely we did it turn actually there is you know it would turn into that story so yes it would and thanks for being a supportive friend and listening to those early days um many I just want to really thank you as well this has been set the bar really high for the first event thank you again I have so much respect for you thank you so so much this has been beautiful I'll be there in a bit and then I'll have two minutes