February 24, 2017 In Flourishing in the Margins, Power of Story By Rachel Gold

How to build resilience in trans kids (and everyone else)

With all the focus on awful government news these days, it’s easy to forget how much power we have as individuals—and as a thriving community of queer and trans people and our allies. Let’s not get locked in to planning for the next 4 years. Let’s also look at the next 40 and the next 400. We need queer and trans kids to grow up resilient and become powerful adults. We know this is possible because we have powerful queer and trans adults who grew up when U.S. culture was worse than it is now for queer and trans kids. Remember the 1980s? Or the 1950s? Each of us has the opportunity to help build resilience in each other and in the next generation of queer and trans kids. Let’s look at how we do this: According to a great Harvard article, the common factors that “predispose children to positive outcomes in the face of significant adversity” are: facilitating supportive adult-child relationships; building a sense of self-efficacy and perceived control; providing opportunities to strengthen adaptive skills and self-regulatory capacities; and mobilizing sources of faith, hope, and cultural traditions. Here are action steps each of us can take to make those factors widely available to our

February 12, 2017 In Power of Story By Rachel Gold

2017 Year of Love

[Pictured above Amirah Sackett (left) and Rachel Gold at the Caravan of Love march in Minneapolis, Feb. 11, 2017.] I’ve had some restless nights since the current regime was elected. Woke up panicky, wondering if they’d come for me. But I realized it wasn’t me they’d come for this time. Queer, white Jews in American—not the top of the hate list at the moment. We're more in the middle. I started making lists of my friends, ranking them by the most vulnerable, so I’d know who to keep tabs on. That was November. Now I’m making lists of who to pay attention to so I know when to show up and be part of the beautiful coalitions that are forming. I’m making lists of where I can make the biggest difference. I’m getting really excited for the next two-to-four years. It’s not going to be easy or comfortable, but we have one of the best opportunities in recent history to build immense coalitions across the U.S. and change the future for good. Yesterday I attended two wonderful events that illustrated this: Reclaim’s annual “Celebrate the Love” brunch and “MN Caravan of Love: A Walk of Love for Immigrants & Refugees.” So much love! Reclaim’s mission

December 14, 2016 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Finding the ideal nonbinary pronoun for fiction

I’ve been working on the Just Girls sequel and playing with some science fiction, so I’m obsessing about nonbinary pronouns. In the Just Girls sequel, I’m using the pronoun “yo” for Nico. (Or, rather, Nico’s using that pronoun for yoself, but when I say that my characters talk to me, people give me odd looks.) But I wanted to try some additional pronouns in case I like something better. “They/them” pronouns in the singular is becoming more and more popular in spoken use, but it’s tougher in fiction. For example in this dialogue: “Their new jacket looks great! Did they make it themself? “It’s from their parents. They gave it to them for their birthday.” I find that last sentence very frustrating. I’m a big fan of “they/them” applied to individuals, but I’m an even bigger fan of clarity and ease of reading. In my experience, “they/them” works much better in spoken use than in fiction. I was hoping to get around it by using Spivak or Elverson pronouns, which are the “they/them” set without the “th”: ey/em/eir/eirs/emself. These pronouns are not as easy to write with as I want them to be. It’s possible this is because I’m spoiled by the ease of yo/yos. Let

November 16, 2016 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Non-binary biology

 "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.” — Joan Didion At the Solcana event for Reclaim on Nov. 5, we were talking about how writing helps us understand ourselves. For me, writing My Year Zero helped me articulate feelings about my gender. In the novel, the main character, Lauren, is writing a science fiction story online with friends. Her character in the story turns out not to be human-like person, but rather a self-aware community of microscopic robots (nanites) that can take any form. That’s how I feel about my gender — and I thought that was unusual, but maybe not so much. More and more, modern science is demonstrating that if there exist ideal “male” and “female” sexes, they’re blended in nearly all people. Consider …. The human body is made up of around 30 trillion cells and about 40 trillion bacteria living mainly in the digestive tract. For details: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160111-microbiome-estimate-count-ratio-human-health-science/ Of those 30 trillion cells in the human body, it’s possibly (maybe even likely) that there are variations in the DNA that we’d consider to be different sexes. Most simply, people can carry both XX and XY DNA in their

November 11, 2016 In Embodied Neurodivergence, Flourishing in the Margins By Rachel Gold

Taking care of yourself in tough times — a guide for the neurodiverse

You might not need this post, but I do. It started as a note to myself about what works. Some of it might also work for you. And I’m sure I missed some things. Feel free to add in the comments. If you’re like me, you’re different from a lot of the people around you: You might have more trouble letting go of obsessive negative thoughts You might get easily triggered into traumatic states You might be prone to spirals of anxiety or depression that are really hard to stop You might feel that you’re the one responsible for fixing the world You might absorb feelings and energy from the people around you, even if it makes you sick One great thing is that you know this about yourself. Also there are a lot of simple steps you can take to be strong and healthy. Here's my list: Disconnect from stressful inputs Turn. It. Off. Whether your stressful input of choice is TV news, Internet news, Twitter, you can turn it off. Turn off notifications. Turn off integrations (like Facebook chat linking to your phone’s texting). Do not let disturbing information catch you off guard. You can look at it when you’re well and ready and feeling powerful. You can

October 11, 2016 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

The importance of being out

Last night at the pre-National Coming Out Day event at the Roseville Barnes & Noble, we talked about whether coming out is still important. The consensus: absolutely. We need to see people like us having good lives so we know what’s possible. And since humans have a strong need for belonging, the ability to be around people who share our identities can be profoundly healing and supportive of our growth. I came out as lesbian when I was 14-16 (it was a process). At the time culturally there was a lot less support than there is today and I spent immense energy fighting for this identity. I was talking to a friend recently about how, if we have multiple identities, one can really come to the front and take all the negativity and all our energy. That’s been true for me with my lesbian identity. I’m still super out and proud about it, but in honor of the day, here’s what else I’m out about: My gender is non-binary/gender fluid. Yes, I can be non-binary and lesbian for a variety of reasons including: I often choose to stay in the girl/woman gender space in public to expand the ideas of what’s possible for

October 11, 2016 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Support Reclaim by shopping!

The Roseville Barnes & Noble is celebrating National Coming Out Day with a week-long bookfair promotion for Reclaim — Reclaim works to increase access to mental health support so that queer and trans youth may reclaim their lives from oppression in all its forms. A portion of the purchase price of books, games, music, gifts and more that you buy online from Barnes & Noble goes to Reclaim through 11:00 p.m. Central time October 15. (The portion is 12-25% depending on a number of factors.) It is not too early to do your holiday gift shopping — or to purchase items for all those Scorpios in your lives who have birthdays coming up. Here's how to make sure your purchases benefit Reclaim: Be sure to use this web address: bn.com/bookfairs to do your online shopping. Click on the button “Start Shopping Now.” When you’ve finished selecting your purchases, click on your cart and begin the check-out process. In the Payment section, scroll down to the bottom where it says Check this Box if this is a Bookfair Order. When you check the box, type the Reclaim bookfair ID number in the provided box: 12009270. If you already have a BN.com account with a default

September 28, 2016 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Readings and events for fall

After taking the summer off, it's time for more blog articles, readings, events and more. In upcoming weeks I'll return to my book insights and cool science. Here are my upcoming events for October and early November: Oct. 7-9, Gaylaxicon — I'll be on a panel or two at the annual international science fiction, fantasy, gaming, and comics convention for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people and their friends. I'll update here when I've got details but you can see general information about the convention at: http://www.gaylaxicon2016.org/. Oct. 10, 7 p.m., Roseville Barnes & Noble National Coming Out Day event — I'm reading with Juliann Rich in this event supporting Reclaim. Purchases in the store all day long will support Reclaim and the amazing work they do for queer and trans youth. Click here for the official info on the B&N site. Oct. 15, Twin Cities Book Festival — More info soon but I'll be at the Festival Saturday morning with books! On Nov. 5, 3 p.m., at Solcana Fitness — LGBTQIA+ reading and discussion with me, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Molly Beth Griffin, Juliann Rich and Vee Signorelli. This is a benefit for Reclaim and you can see more info on Juliann's site at:

July 6, 2016 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Writing descriptions that reveal character

If you're at GCLS this Saturday in D.C., I'm teaching a class with Laina Villeneuve: "Astonishingly Beautiful: Descriptions that Reveal Character." And if you were there, here's the PPT: Descriptionclass.pdf Among the cool things we're going to talk about is all the work that description can do in a story. We often think that the work of description is to show something visually or, at best, to cover all five senses (six if you're writing paranormal). But description can do so much more than that. It can: Continue the action Foreshadow Give us the character/voice of the describer Reveal character through traits/mannerisms Give us a world/culture Here are some of the examples we're using: Action: Karin Kallmaker's 18th & Castro “Stretch marks, the emergency C­section scar and the occasional thick black hair that grew back faster than she could pluck it— how could Brenda find any of that sexy?” Foreshadowing: Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadow “The nose was sharp and seemed to have more than the usual number of component bones making odd little corrugations all over it. Her lips were unfashionably thin and pale, and when she spoke you could see that her teeth were odd too, the incisors especially long and dangerous looking.” Voice: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere "There are four

May 26, 2016 In Queer and Trans Literature By Rachel Gold

Music for the Just Girls sequel

You get a short blog this week with more videos because I’m hard at work on the Just Girls sequel. This story starts the night that Just Girls ends and follows the stories of Nico and Tucker over the next several months. After much brainstorming, the title is one again Nico & Tucker. It was the working title and I've yet to come up with anything better. Here are a few songs and videos that give you the feeling of the new book plus some musical background to Just Girls. And if you didn't see the early blurb of what the book's about, read the post where I signed the contract for Nico & Tucker. Also if you're wondering who did that great illustration of Nico and Tucker at the top of this post, it was the fabulous Mandie Brasington (more of her art here) and you can click here to view and download the full illustration. Trini Dem Girls It's not the song itself but the video that is core to the feeling of Nico & Tucker. Nico dances at a performance space called "Jim's Glorious Noodle," which I imagine is somewhat like the space you see in this video —