The Invention of the Trans Novel

If you spend time around transgender people, you may notice, on badges and buttons, on sewn patches, or even as a tattoo, the sigil "T4T," or "t4t." The characters stand for "trans for trans," and the usage began as shorthand on dating sites. Imogen Binnie's "Nevada" might be, in that extended, contentious sense, the first t4t novel. Published in 2013 by the trans-focussed (and now defunct) Topside Press, and just reissued by the mainstream trade publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, "Nevada" is hardly the first novel about trans characters, or the first by a trans author for the queer community--Leslie Feinberg got there in 1993, with "Stone Butch Blues." Still, "Nevada" seemed to be the first book-length realist novel about trans women, in American English, with an ISBN on it, that was not only written by one of us but written for us.