Writing
Across multiple worlds in upheaval, a curious cast of Black queer characters must choose between what they already know themselves to be and what they might yet become in the cataclysm. A shapeshifter learns to embrace their body as it changes through a lunar cycle. A stranger’s visit disturbs three sisters sheltering from monsters that stalk the land. An archivist hears an irresistible call to the rising ocean as she uncovers a surprising history. A mysterious fire sparks whispers of revolution in the mind of a vampire’s captive consort.
At once tender and audacious, Nathan Alexander Moore’s debut collection tells the stories of extraordinary creatures making impossible but human decisions. Traversing apocalypses both big and small, these captivating tales vibrate with the tensions between loss and growth; self and community; precarity and possibility.
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Poetry chapbook available from above/ground press.
“As a debut collection, small colossus, serves as the preliminary limning out of my own self-conceived ethics of writing. The work of this collection is a kind of stitching, sewing some hope onto the hem of horror, a recognition that neither ever has the power to fully obliterate the other. Through these poems I attempt to chart a Black queer poetics of care, nurturing a language that attends to wounds that are both individual and collective. With this project and beyond, I want the place I build with my language to be lush, vibrant, and blooming. I want heartbreak and hope to reside there in equal measure, without one trying to conquer or consume its counterpart.”
In this creative-critical essay, I bring together insights from both Black trans studies and Black feminist theory to discuss the limits of visibility for Black transfemmes. By articulating a theory of transliminality, I discuss how the lives of Black transfemmes are structured by multiple regimes of misrecognition due to the interlocking oppressions of their race, gender, and queer femininity. Moreover, I will demonstrate the differences between being ‘visible’ and being ‘seen’. Through the imbricated writing styles of scholarly criticism, poetry, and creative non-fiction, this essay will integrate my own experiences as a Black transfemme and build upon the queer feminist of color legacy that urges us to speak our truth, generate theory from the materiality of our lives, and sees creativity and artistry as essential to our collective freedom.
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