A Natural History of Transition is a collection of short stories that disrupts the notion that trans people can only have one transformation. Like the landscape studied over eons, change does not have an expiration date for these trans characters, who grow as tall as buildings, turn into mountains, unravel hometown mysteries, and give birth to cocoons. Portland-based author Callum Angus infuses his work with a mix of alternative history, horror, and a reality heavily dosed with magic.
"A Natural History of Transition, the debut story collection from Callum Angus, disrupts the singular, medicalized notions of transition to expose instead the multitudes of transformation, detailing their magical delights, and unwelcome horrors." —Madeleine Moss, Chicago Review of Books
"Angus shows mastery of both compressed and expansive forms—we have the exciting opportunity to glimpse here a young writer exploring different modalities of structure and tone (lyrical, experimental, referential, mythic) with almost universally compelling results." —Giancarlo Latta, Gertrude Press
"A Natural History of Transition is overall a beautiful and mystifying collection of stories that arrives at a time when it’s much needed." —Nour Abi-Nakhoul, Montreal Review of Books
"This collection of stories deftly captures the sometimes frightening, often beautiful, and frequently magical leap into the unknown that is transition. Angus’s writing asks you hold on, firm but gentle, and trust the journey." —jiaqing wilson-yang, author of Small Beauty
"Reading this slim yet expansive collection is a joyride for the brain, even when it reckons with deep-rooted pain and grief." —Sarah Neilson, The Seventh Wave
Callum Angus is a trans writer, editor, and independent scholar living in Portland, OR. He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary and Signal Fire Foundation for the Arts, has presented research at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, and was a 2018 Writer-in-Residence at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. A former bookseller at Powell's and the independent Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, he holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a BA in geography from Mount Holyoke College, and has taught writing at Smith College, UMass Amherst, and at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. He's also worked in publicity for Catapult Books, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press, and founded the literary journal smoke + mold.
