Edward Underhill didn’t plan on having his debut adult fiction book, The In-Between Bookstore, featuring a trans main character, come out six days before the Trump inauguration, but it’s kind of perfect timing. Especially since the book features a time slip, where Darby Madden meets his younger self at the Illinois indie bookstore where he worked as a teenager. As the author of three young adult novels with trans main characters—Always the Almost, This Day Changes Everything, and the forthcoming In Case You Read This—his books are often about discovering who you are when the world isn’t quite ready for you. Two weeks before the Los Angeles wildfires began, Underhill and I met at a Los Angeles coffee shop to discuss his breadth of work as a trans author. The author and music composer understands the importance of meeting the moment, particularly at a time when trans people are being legislated into non-existence. Underhill provides a hopeful look on how to keep going when the fight feels the hardest.
Jennifer Chen: In your Author’s Note from the advanced reader copy I read, you talk about discovering your first queer book at age 17 in your Wisconsin hometown indie bookstore. Given the prevalence of book bans now, particularly for queer youth, how do you see your work as part of this big canon?
Edward Underhill: I feel like there’s been a lot of talk about book bans, particularly when it comes to books for teens. I’ve written books for teenagers, which has been on the cutting edge of more diverse representation than adult fiction. But at the same time, I actually feel like there’s less representation in adult books, particularly for trans identity outside of romance. Romance has historically made more room for more diversity earlier than other genres and mainstream commercial spaces. So with this book, I wanted to write something that was for me and my friends and where we are now.
JC: You mentioned earlier that you discovered your first queer book by looking at its cover. I’d love to talk about your book cover and how the main character, Darby, goes in on one side and comes out the other side. Can you talk about what you hoped readers would find in that imagery?
I wanted to write something that was for me and my friends and where we are now.
EU: I am super happy to talk about the cover because I love it. We originally had cover sketches that were a very different concept. Some sketches just had books on them. Others had images of the actual bookstore. But they felt like they were missing some sort of element that got at the self-discovery aspect or the time slip element. So I started making Pinterest boards and sending them to my publisher. I had some general images of fireflies, the Midwest, and a tree. There’s an important tree in the book with a tire swing attached to it, and my editor was very taken with the idea of having a tree on the cover, which I also liked. So we went back to the drawing board. My editor and his team had the idea of the character going in and then coming back out. I like that you see the younger character going in and the older character coming out, but you never totally see the younger character’s face and you only have hints of both of them. My editor also felt like getting the cover right so that someone would pick it up for the cover was important. I feel like the cover exists out of time and space in this very deep color scheme, but also I didn’t ever want it to be a book where you would think this is just going to be about trauma. I ultimately wanted it to be like a warm and healing book.
JC: Why did you choose to set your book in an independent bookstore, particularly now?
EU: I was a big library kid growing up. I loved to go into the independent bookstore where I grew up, which is sadly not around anymore, because it represented possibility. I felt very isolated and alone, especially as a teenager. Losing myself in stories was the easiest way out of my head for me and my writing. And even though I found the one queer book on the shelf that wasn’t my identity, I still found pieces that were lifelines that I could hang on to. And so for me, in that sense, the setting of a bookstore was completely natural. I wanted it to be someplace that had distinct smells and things you could touch and just like a very physical presence. I wanted something that could feel very grounded, but also like slip in and out of time and space and all of that. And to me, bookstores always exist slightly out of time.
JC: With this new administration, where do you have hope? What has helped me is what you’ve told me in other conversations we’ve had that trans people have always existed.
EU: It is a very weird time to be releasing a book like this, but I find hope in a couple of different places. Publishing still tends to view trans books as niche, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by how many booksellers, librarians, and readers who have been excited about my books and have not treated my identity like a big deal. When I got my very first book deal, I thought a lot about how I was going to present myself on social media, about what my boundaries were going to be around different things because I was absolutely prepared for plenty of transphobic bullshit to come into my DMs. And that’s happened. But I wasn’t prepared for how much I’ve also gotten the opposite. I’ve had so many people who have liked reading my books and have talked to me about aspects of the story that have had nothing to do with the trans characters. And that feels like a step forward to me.
The younger generation coming of age now also gives me hope because they have the Internet. They have a way to find community. When I came out, I remember Googling for other trans people because all I wanted to know was like, It’s not just me. Can I have a career, a community, and a future? And I found one blog. Now you can find everything online. For my birthday, my partner gave me To Survive on This Shore, a coffee table book by Jess T. Dugan, with photo essays of trans elders over the age of 50. I had never seen something like this. These people have been sort of quietly living their lives for decades. And that gives me hope, too, because it’s a reminder that we have always been here and we will continue to always be here.
It’s scary to be in the spotlight as a trans person right now.
It’s scary to be in the spotlight as a trans person right now. It’s been wonderful how my team for this book has said this story is worthwhile reading this year. I hope there are a lot of people out there who will be galvanized to take more action now, partly because it’s easier to find things out on the Internet and easier to have methods of connection. There’s more visibility now. It’s more likely you will know someone who is trans.
JC: Nonbinary comedian, activist, and writer Alok Vaid-Menon recently wrote on Instagram, “The apocalypse is not inevitable. Fight for the people that you are and the people that you love.” I’ve sat with that because I needed that reminder. What does that statement mean to you?
EU: I’m part of a group called Authors Against Book Bans. We started around the time of the election with a lot of fear, like should I use a pen name? But this is my actual name. I have fought long and hard for that name and to be here so I don’t really want to make myself smaller. But I think the apocalypse is not an inevitable idea, it’s something I’ve been hearing a lot in that group. If you think that something is inevitable, you only make it easier to take these books off the shelves before they’re even challenged. You only make this easier if you give up ahead of time. That is how fascist forces take power. And that’s what I’m hanging on to now. The incoming administration would love for me to go, “Well, I guess it’s too dangerous to write trans. I’ll have to write something else. Or I’ll have to stop writing.” I am very lucky to have people on my team who are behind me. My agent has said to me, “I will be trying to sell your books until I physically can no longer do it.” It’s important to have those people with you so you don’t feel alone in trying to do it. But it gives me more courage to keep writing those books. The apocalypse is not inevitable. There are ways to apply that in big and small ways. As it relates to books, I am going to write a trans book. Make them take it off and then put a new one in its place and make them take that one off and do it over and over and over again. Do not comply in advance.
JC: The second statement Alok wrote that I’ve been thinking a lot about is, “In a world hellbent on destruction, do not just critique, create, create, create.” It made me think about us as authors and members of marginalized communities. How do you continue to write?
EU: I write out of spite. I internalized that concept years ago, and it’s gotten me through agent and publisher rejections. And it still applies now. I tend to get sad and depressed first, and then I get angry and write something anyway. Writing The In-Between Bookstore was really helpful because having this speculative, slightly magical element allowed me to divorce from my own reality. I could totally get lost in it. I didn’t have to think about wrestling with political stuff. I was wrestling with the nuances of this small Midwestern town. And because there was a magical bookstore, I wasn’t sitting in my own trauma and fear all the time. What’s been very important to me is how writing can get me out of that fear and hopefully can get my readers out of that fear. Also, I don’t just want to read things for myself where it’s completely realistic, then you’re just sitting with the fear, right?
Nothing is actually equal until you have all of the mediocre books, all of the great books, and all of the trashy books.
I think it’s more important than ever to have every single type of book created. At a book panel I was on, another author said someone had left them a one-star review on Goodreads. They said, “It’s great to know that now that we finally have a queer book that’s as terrible as all of these straight books we have.” We need every type of book. You need the fluffy books. You need the trauma books. You need all of the books in between, because that book matters for somebody. Nothing is actually equal until you have all of the mediocre books, all of the great books, and all of the trashy books. And I think on that front, what worries me is that I think we have a little bit of a call- coming-from-inside-the-house of marginalized people who feel that their representation in books has to be “perfect” because otherwise it’s somehow damaging the cause. I’ve been here long enough to know that the bigots will never love you no matter how “perfect” you are. And so instead, I would rather have all of the representation of the bad people and the good people and the in-between people and the messy and the real people. That’s what motivates me to keep creating. There are so many interesting and varied stories out there. How can I tell that story with a trans person? What are the stories I can find? How do I write them in a way that makes sense to me? That’s where we get varied and interesting stories.
The post The Magic of Finding Yourself in “The In-Between Bookstore” appeared first on Electric Literature.
