Now writing: butch.

Style is a mark, a signature, a way to be seen. But style can also be a response to the fear of being seen. butch. follows that double life through a century of masculine women and trans masculine people: Clara Bow’s tomboy pluck, Ma Rainey’s swagger, Lauren Bacall’s cool, and the memoirs and poems of trans masculine writers who learned to armor themselves and to speak anyway.

Part cultural history, part criticism, part personal reckoning, the book traces how butch style survives by being passed down, and how it builds what I call unruly alliances — bonds between people who aren’t supposed to recognize each other. At a moment when masculine brittleness passes as strength, butch. offers another way to be masculine, one that protects without hardening and that holds a door open for the butches who come next.