I’m excited to share that my story “Ready for Combat” is being published in the anthology “Fight Like A Girl: Vol 2.” by Wizard Tower Press.
If you missed the first volume, here’s the overall theme of the anthology:
“The calls for both anthologies have been open to women and anyone identifying as a woman. We’re absolutely delighted to be able to showcase three stories by trans women. We wish we could have done this quietly and without fanfare as we did in 2014, but right now we both feel a strong need to be seen standing proudly beside our trans sisters. After all, they fight like girls too… because they are.”
You can find links to the first volume here.
As for my story?
It’s a sequel of my story in the first anthology, although works as a standalone too. When my editor first read it she said “I want to join an anti-terf magic circle.” in response, so I guess that’s now how I think of it.
About My Stories
In the first volume, my short story The Coyote followed a woman discovering a deeper fight going on in her hometown of Brighton, and unravelling how different groups were fighting across the city. This focused on how she was often expected to be ‘less’ because she was female.
The sequel, set decades later, shows how that conflict has shifted with the changing world, including experiences of those who don’t fit the traditional roles of their gender or expected sexuality. We see the way that people exclude those of nonbinary or transgender presentations, and how this fight requires all of us to fight for basic human rights for all women.
Why I Wrote This Story
I wrote a little more about my personal take on this in the blog for the publisher, which you can read here.
Alongside my own story, the themes in this second volume really explore the term of “girl” and “woman” and what we now understand of both the biological and social aspects of these terms.
“Being a woman is vastly more than a matter of physical biology. Here we have trans women in both Julia Hawkes-Reed’s ‘We Have Always Been Here’ and KR Green’s ‘Ready for Combat’. Trans women are women, and AI’s, or ship-minds who have been stripped of their human bodies (as in Naomi Scott’s ‘A Way Out’ ) but identify as women are also women.”
Interested? It’s publication day, so grab your copy here.