Soula Emmanuel didn’t want to write a trans memoir. “[They’re] often an attempt by people to justify their own lives and the decisions they’ve made,” the author says. “Frankly, most people’s lives aren’t that interesting.”
It is a characteristically damp Dublin day when I meet with Soula in The Liberties, an area of the city that was once an infamous slum but has been gentrified, all independent coffee shops and artists’ studios. There are many trans Irish writers but none, to the best of my research, have published a novel. Is hers, titled Wild Geese, the first Irish trans novel? Soula looks almost embarrassed. Out of the side of her mouth, she confirms: “I think it might be.”
Trans writing might have skewed towards memoir in the past, but recently, there’s been a surge in trans fiction. Writers such as Torrey Peters (Detransition Baby), Imogen Binnie (Nevada), Alison Rumfitt (Tell Me I’m Worthless), and Megan Milks (Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body) have rejected the role of memoirist, instead opting to create some of the most original and radical fiction out there today. As Soula puts it: “The skills I felt I built up in denying things to myself probably helped me to become a fiction writer.”
The full piece, by Barry Pierce, is here.
Soula Emmanuel 