PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — As the street hummed below with the activity of passing cars and the excitement and ready-made plans of conversations after work on a Friday, the second floor of Giovanni’s Room in the Gayborhood was locked in relative quiet as those gathered bore witness to a new collection of local writers announcing themselves to the city.
As a few dozen packed the cozy space lined by bookcases, some of those writers shared their works of fiction. Some were created at another point in their fiction-writing careers, but most of the shared work came from a zine that all the writers created together over the last few months.
“Glamouring” is the first zine from The Philly Fictionists, a group of local trans fiction writers who met at a retreat organized by Julian Shendelman. He’s a local writer and editor, and ever since moving to Philadelphia, he’s dreamed of gathering a collective of trans writers to share and create works of fiction.
“We’re out here, there’s a lot of us,” Shendelman said. “I think Philly is a particularly trans city and it’s also a particularly literary city, and the middle of that Venn diagram is not as connected as it could be.”
He’s not naive to think he’s the first person in the city to ever gather a cohort of trans fiction writers and put out a zine of their work, “but there wasn’t anything at this moment,” and a grant from the Leeway Foundation was the “kick” Shendelman said he needed to put his plan into action.
“They say that if you don’t see the thing you want in the world, you should go make it,” he said.
In his introduction to “Glamouring,” Shendelman said 42 local trans writers applied to be a part of The Philly Fictionists’ first cohort, and 12 were eventually accepted. They met for their retreat at a local university back in January, and the prospect of putting out a zine with their work arose out of the energy brought by the group for the project.
“I was really excited, honestly just thrilled and honored that people were willing to chip in so much labor,” said Shendelman. “It made me feel really good and made me feel really cared for and part of a community.”
Malachi Lily’s work adorns the cover of “Glamouring,” and they said their experience as part of the cohort was “deeply nourishing,” and they left with a host of new friends.
“It was kind of beautiful because I had been reflecting about how residencies, fellowships, things like that tend to be very exploitative towards writers and artists, and not very considerate of the things we actually need,” Lily said. “And the things that Julian did were like the opposite of that.”
In addition to paying members of the cohort for their time, Shendelman said the grant funding also allowed them to pay for food.
Marianne Agnes contributed the story “Visitors” to the zine, helped edit, and brought “Glamouring” to Giovanni’s Room — where she volunteers — for its launch. She credited Shendelman for bringing together such a diverse, but like-minded group of writers for the first cohort of The Philly Fictionists.
“We all had overlap in the kind of work that we were writing. A lot of us were writing speculative fiction, sci-fi, Fabulism,” Agnes said. “These are writers that are writing as vastly different oftentimes, but it’s sort of like we’re nerding out about the same kind of stuff.”
She said the end product of “Glamouring” is a collection of stories deeply relatable to everyone inside Philly’s trans community, but also offers an access point for those outside to learn more.
“We’re all limited by our own experiences, so I think just being exposed to and growing by [reading] the stories of storytellers who come from backgrounds like this, I think, is a beautiful thing,” Agnes said.
Her hope is for this first zine from The Philly Fictionists not to be the last, and she said she is ready to combine her grant-writing experience with Shendelman’s to get more funding for another cohort.
“It’s really important to me to be a part of building the trans fiction scene here in Philly,” said Agnes. “Kind of put Philly on the map. Not only that, but just build community with people, with writers, and give people a platform, and connect people.”
Lily said they wish the funding were available to make experiences like theirs with The Philly Fictionists happen more frequently for more writers like them.
“I wish there were the resources that a cohort like this could pop up every single month,” Lily said. “I just want there to be more to encourage the imagination of other people, to let them know that there’s a space for their stories to belong and to find kinship in those stories.”
Shendelman’s hope is for The Philly Fictionists to be able to live on with or without his presence as a guiding voice.
“My hope is that this continues to grow without me having to steer it forward, just solely on the energy of the other people involved, and that more and more other trans writers flock to us, sort of like a magnet, drawing more and more into the orbit of a community,” he said.
Very limited physical copies of “Glamouring” are available at Giovanni’s Room, but unlimited digital copies are available for download on Shendelman’s website.
