I am humbled and honored to receive a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, with which I hope to continue to compose poetry and prose that make visible the lives of transgender people in the American South, an often-hostile place I call home. The funds will, on a practical level, allow me to continue to carve a place for myself here—to purchase a working automobile, to better afford healthcare, and to afford rent in a time of escalating inflation—and in doing so allow me precious time to write.

The fellowship may also help me access archives and research that will help me better understand the legacies of queer communities in South Carolina, the topic of current and future literary works. Queer stories and poems have helped reflect myself back to me, have helped me imagine a future in which I was still alive. Trans people have always belonged in the South, and we will always belong here. We will not be erased or eradicated. We are part of your communities and your families. We will live and love, with joy and determination, here, and I want to document that beautiful resistance. At our time when the lives and future of queer people seem to be precariously endangered, I want to share stories of how we have survived, how we will continue to survive.