Welcome to Canopy Literary Review. This journal came about after a yearlong search for publications of its kind that turned up few results. Pride sections of bookstores are well stocked with material on the fight for trans rights; less with literature on just living as an ordinary, everyday trans person. Understandably, given the threats we face, but we’d rather not be completely deprived of the future we fight for. So, we visit, through art, imagination and creative writing.

An example of the literature (and future) we seek is a collection of short stories published last year called Be Gay Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos (Dzanc Books). It is one of the inspirations for this journal. The title is a protest slogan. Using it for this short story collection feels queerly sarcastic. The stories are set mostly in a world in which the war against LGBTQ+ identities has ended with peace and inclusion. The characters are criminals because they commit criminal acts; their identities have nothing to do with it. The stories are snapshots of mundane queer life, which turns out to be remarkably similar to mundane non-queer life: surviving work, romance, exes, neighbors, the one-percent.

Canopy One is another collection of exemplars. We have solicited and selected the pieces herein, and included a few of our own, to illustrate the tone and quality of the literature we wish to represent, the Canopy’s identity, so to speak. We are trans/nonbinary-centered, but there are cisgender authors here, too, because we believe the future is collaborative, and adapting to shifting social demands is a skill we all must learn. We seek the perspectives and humor of those who do.

A tree canopy as our symbol for gender-nonconformity began with the idea of leaves having a particular shape that indicates their species while bearing individual differences, transforming over the course of their lives, from delicate green, to a robust green, to a final hue of spectacular decay, each one marked in its own way by insects, wind, squirrels, birds and parasitic spores. The canopy is what gives a tree its treeness, its countenance comprised of every single leaf; thus, in seeking a symbol to represent transgender and nonbinary people, we have happened upon one that represents all.

Thanks for joining us,

Canopy Editorial Team