A new edition of the acclaimed debut story collection by two-time Lambda Literary Award winner Casey Plett.
By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman, eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show that growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but will never be predictable.
A Safe Girl to Love, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction, was first published in 2014. Now back in print after a long absence, this new edition includes an afterword by the author.
About the Author
Casey Plett is the author of the novel Little Fish and the short story collections A Dream of a Woman and A Safe Girl to Love; co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers; and the publisher at LittlePuss Press. She wrote a column on transitioning for McSweeney's Internet Tendency and her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Maclean's, The Walrus, Plenitude, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the winner of two Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, winner of the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and she received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She lives in Windsor, Ontario.
What People Are Saying
"Casey Plett's stories are exquisite, riveting, transformative, reasonably pissed off and joyously and riskily generous in the audience they imagine." Trish Salah, author of Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1 and Wanting in Arabic
"Plett's stories show kindness at the same time as they show clear-eyed judgment, both of which we need. She writes beautifully about dressing rooms, balcony plants, house parties, the paramount importance of keeping your obligations to your cats. She takes us into the knot of really accurately rendered bonds of old friendships, families, queer solidarities, and she shows us how we can live there." Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun and The Black Emerald
"An astounding debut by an original new literary voice."
Zoe Whittall, author of The Spectacular and The Best Kind of People
"Her prose is reminiscent of Lorrie Moore and Miriam Toews, but there is both a tenderness and a willingness to confront bleak truths in Plett's writing that is all her own. I love this book." Imogen Binnie, author of Nevada
"A new edition of Plett's debut collection resurfaces 11 thoughtful stories exploring the lives of young trans women as they attempt to carve out space for themselves, set often in Canada and the Pacific Northwest ... A Safe Girl to Love is driven by deeply human, sometimes humorous, but always exquisitely rendered details." Kirkus Reviews
"Lambda winner Plett (Little Fish) made her debut with this impressive collection, which now returns to print ... Plett has a knack for cracking open her characters' messy, conflicted feelings with punchy lines, as in "A Carried Ocean Breeze," when the narrator reflects on her and her friends: "I don't want to be brave. I want us to be okay." These character studies are thoughtful and gorgeous." Publishers Weekly
"Casey Plett's stories pack an emotional punch that lingers after you shut the book." PRISM international