Bird\u27s Eye

Abstract

Bird’s Eye is a collection of personal essays, and Vessels for Sounds of the Ocean is a novel excerpt. The YA novel-in-progress follows Avery Johnson, a nonbinary fourteen-year-old with rapidly progressing scoliosis, as they harness the power of their best friend’s pet sea monster to erase memories of their spine doctor’s ongoing sexual abuse. A queer coming-of-age story, this novel strives to bring a trans lens to narratives about disability, trauma, and grief—to define characters beyond their queerness and disability alone. In Bird’s Eye, personal essays consider the ways in which transness, disability, and chronic illness intersect in the body. Essays return to the concept of inversion—the ways in which others perceive the speaker’s gender as an absence of femininity, rather than a vibrant presence itself. Weaving in research—from peregrine falcons and tree leaf patterns to vampire stories and hotel ghosts—essays turn to the outside world to tell the story of a body in flux