Meredith Talusan is an award-winning transgender author, journalist, and editor based in New York. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, BuzzFeed, and Vice. She is the founding executive editor of them., Condé Nast’s LGBTQ+ platform, where she is now contributing editor. She is the author of the memoir Fairest. Follow her on Twitter: @1demerith.

EB: What first drew you to writing nonfiction? And then what made you realize you wanted to write this memoir?

MT: I became what I would call an “accidental journalist.” I did the Cornell MFA program in fiction in 2008, and then I continued in the comparative literature PhD program at Cornell. With the prevailing norms of American publishing at the time, the place that I felt was most safe for me to be was within academia. But then a friend left his PhD program to become an editor at The American Prospect and then at The Nation, and he kept asking me to write “just one op-ed”, telling me that we needed more trans perspectives out there. This was around 2012. And then one day in 2014, when I was feeling frustrated over my dissertation, I saw this TED Talk by Geena Rocero—sorry, this is a long preamble—

EB: Oh, no, it’s fine. Everyone’s story of how they got into writing is a long preamble!

MT: So, in this TED Talk, she talks about “coming out” as transgender, but “coming out” is a term borrowed from the gay community. There are so many more complexities to disclosure as a trans person. I wrote a 1000-word op-ed on it, and that op-ed got widely shared, and then I started writing more of them about these issues. And I began to see this general-audience nonfiction writing as the middle ground between the fiction that I was writing before and the academic writing that I was doing after. It was a way to merge those two worlds.

Then I became a staff writer at BuzzFeed in August 2015, and one of the first pieces I wrote for them was a piece about the sub-genre of trans women’s memoirs. I read a lot of them for the piece, like eight or nine of them over a two-week period, and I started to notice patterns. Even the best ones, like Redefining Realness by Janet Mockor She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan [EDITOR’S NOTE: Jennifer Finney Boylan was one of the first interviewees in this series in 2015, and she has a new book out called Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs], they’re always written from the perspective of explaining yourself and justifying your existence. They’re always about bringing trans issues to light, and they are written for cis people to understand us and not discriminate against us. It’s a big component of trans memoir writing, and justifiably so, but I felt like that is not the way that cis people approach memoir-writing. If you read some of the best memoirs like Heavyby Kiese Laymon, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion or The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, they’re so much more about the writer’s exploration of themselves. It’s their story. It’s not written for anyone else; it’s written on their own terms, not based on any outside societal pressures. I realized I hadn’t read a trans memoir like that. So that was the germ of Fairest—I realized I wanted to write a memoir like that, where I try to explain the complexity of my life, not to other people but to myself. Especially those three really key periods in my life—my childhood in the Philippines, my time at Harvard, and the time right before my transition––life was moving so fast, that I didn’t have a lot of time to figure things out in those moments. I needed to figure those things out for me.

EB: I actually wanted to ask you about the structure of Fairest. I teach a lot of memoir-writing classes, and my students always want to include every single detail, every single day, of their life in their books, but you can’t do that. You have to be selective and make choices about what to focus on. How did you decide on those three periods of your life to structure your memoir? Did you always know that would be the structure?

MT: I didn’t know from the beginning. When I sold the book, there was actually a fourth section about when I came to America and was in high school in California, and that got cut. I realized there were things I went through in that time period that were similar enough to what I went through adjusting to life at Harvard that it felt repetitive for the reader.

I actually used the title Fairest to structure the book. It’s funny, people always talk about writing something and how hard it is find a title for it, but I also sometimes think that the title allows for a book to organize itself. I was thinking about the word “fairest” in terms of three things: whiteness, feminine beauty, and justice. And in those three periods of my life, I was grappling with all three of those things at the same time.

EB: I love that. Yeah, I didn’t feel like the book was missing anything by skipping over your high school years. You dropped in enough references and memories to clarify, but I didn’t need a whole fourth part as a reader. I remember you had a line about how adjusting to Harvard was even harder and more surreal than adjusting to life in America, and I am going to teach that part to my memoir-writing students and say, look, you can move through four years of your life with one really good sentence.

MT: I think that’s one of the wonderful things about writing—you can compress and expand time. It’s the best medium for that. There isn’t the same expectation for time to move at a linear pace.

EB: I agree. There are movies and shows that try to jump through time and it often doesn’t work. But in writing you can do that really artfully.

MT: Yeah.

EB: Speaking of time, I loved how within each of the sections, even though each one was clearly focused on a different period of your life, within them you would jump forward and back in time, like when you’d reflect on visiting Harvard again twenty years after you graduated. How did you figure out what memories to include in each part, regardless of the time period?

MT: Earlier in my writing evolution I would have tried to plan it all out, but the way it came about in Fairest was fairly organically. I tend to write chronologically, so I wrote a draft of the book that way, jumping from event to the next event that I thought was important, and then I’d look back and realize, oh, there’s something missing here. For example, when I was talking about my relationship to my body as a gay man and feeling objectified as a gay man, but then I realized that this was an issue that transcends my identities, because I also feel this as a woman. It felt important to include there a part where I was grappling with the same issues years later, but in a different gender. I wanted readers to see how those events occurred in my life before transition, and how they then resonated and affected me decades later. Each of those flash forwards were developed like that.

EB: The felt really natural, how the flash forwards were dropped in. It reminded me of how our brains work and how you can be looking out a car window and are suddenly remembering something that happened twenty years ago. We don’t think linearly, but thematically.

MT: I’m also super sensitive to jumps in time in the things that I read, and that made me conscientious about making sure that there were clear transitions for my readers. I’m that person who ends up skipping a section that’s in flashback or flash forward because I want to know what happens next in the chronology of the book. So I really wanted to make sure that whenever I moved to a flash forward section, the reader knew it was something important for them to know right there and then, even if it wasn’t in chronological order.

EB: Ha, that’s funny, because I am the person in writing workshops who calls people out on time issues. I’m always saying, What year is it now? Is this before or after the previous thing? How much time has passed? I’m the person who gets stuck on that, and I didn’t have any of those issues reading your book!

On a slightly different note, I wanted to ask what kinds of research, if any, you did for Fairest? I know so much of writing memoir is digging through your own memories, but did you interview anyone? Re-watch episodes of the show you starred in as a kid? Visit places you used to live?

MT: I did a reasonable amount of factual research. I re-watched old footage of myself, and whenever I’d go back to Harvard, I would go visit different places associated with the things I did there. I went to the path by the Marriott in East Cambridge which plays a large role in the book, or I would go walk around the South End where I lived with Ralph (pronounced the British way, Rafe). And then I would speak to people casually about events in the book—I remain in touch with Ralph and with Richard—but I did not do formal interviews. I do investigative features as part of my work, so I resisted pulling out a tape recorder or taking journalistic notes, because I felt like my brain would shift into a mode that I didn’t want the book to be in. I am sure the book is imperfect. Of course there are errors in memory—but that feels true to life. You don’t quite remember everything in exactly the same way that things actually happened. The key factual details are correct­­—I would fact-check things as much as I could. For example, if I said I researched a certain manuscript while I was at the British library, I would double-check the manuscript is actually at the British Library—but I wanted to give myself space to misremember, to give myself perspective on an event, not remember things like a camera. Because the human memory is not a camera.

EB: Of course. What you said about shifting into a different mode of writing is really interesting. Do you find you approach writing creative nonfiction versus journalism versus fiction differently? Do you still write fiction?

MT: I’m working on a novel right now.

EB: Amazing!

MT: My brain classifies some things as creative, and I approach those things differently than the things I think of as not creative. The novel is clearly creative, and my process for that involves drafting on a yellow pad of paper. Then I transfer that first draft from the yellow pad to a notebook, using a different pen. And then, only after doing that, I type it up, which is the process I enjoy the least. I’ll using the texting keyboard on the iPad, I’ll dictate, I’ll use software that does handwriting recognition, anything to just get it into the computer. After that, I like to use Google Docs because I enjoy being able to edit wherever I am. And then once I feel like I am in good shape, I transfer everything to Scrivener so I can move things around. So that’s my complicated workflow.

But if I think to myself, oh, this isn’t creative—not that it doesn’t involve creativity, but it is something like a quick op-ed or it’s more journalistic—than I just type that up starting with Google Docs.

EB: Where did Fairest fall in this? On yellow pads?

MT: Yes, yes. And I like to have a different pad for each distinct project, so when I’m working on multiple things, it can become a problem.

EB: [laughter] Thank you for sharing that. So, when you do hit problems and road blocks while writing, who do you turn to for support? Who is your writing community?

MT: I had a long-standing writing group while I was in New York. I’m still technically a member, even though I live in the Catskills now. I’m sure they’re not going to kick me out. There are nine of us, and we started in April 2017, and six of us have sold books at this point, and being part of that group is super-motivating and very energizing to have someone to be accountable to on a regular basis. Now I also have a writing group in the Catskills, plus I exchange voice memos with two close friends who are also writers, Alok Vaid-Menon and Jenna Wortham. Voice memos are more personal than texting, but we also don’t want to interrupt each other while writing by calling, so we started sending these voice memos. I feel like their processes are the most similar to mine, and we have similar challenges—we’re all extroverts—so it’s hard for us to tune out the world to be able to do our work. Having them in my life and knowing that they are dealing with similar things—it’s really strengthening and supportive.

EB: That’s great.

MT: The other funny thing, and it’s weirdly capitalist, but the farther along you are in your career, the greater chance that you’ll be able to interface and interact with people who are also farther along in their careers. But, as much as possible, I try to interact with and support writers who are just starting out in their careers. And, sure, those relationships are more of them sending me stuff and giving them feedback than me sending them stuff, but it supports me as much as it supports them. It nourishes me. I don’t think I could function as a writer and as a human being without helping others. I feel it’s partially because I come from a super communal culture in the Philippines.

EB: I so agree. I find it so sustaining to be able to give help to people, especially after I’ve received so much help to get where I am now. And I always just hope that the people I help then turn around and pass it on to someone else.

MT: Right. I have those figures in my life, too, who helped me. I don’t rely on them as much as I used to, because my career is at a more mature stage, but for years—Alex Chee, for instance, whenever I had questions about writing stuff, I would email or DM him, and he was always super ready to help. People like José Antonio Vargas, Janet Mock—all enormously helpful. Those cycles of support are so important.

EB: Those are some of my favorite writers, you just named right there.

MT: [laughter]

EB: In general, what do you find most challenging about writing nonfiction? And what do you find most rewarding?

MT: The most challenging part is that I am deeply committed to telling the truth—not always telling the factual truth, but telling the core emotional truth—and that can mean hurting people or compromising my relationships. Like with my parents, for instance. I’m estranged from both of my parents—now I would say that I am semi-estranged from my dad because I did see him recently in a group setting—and I made the conscious decision not to consult them about the book. In part, because I felt like this is my book. They did objectively bad things. I shouldn’t feel ashamed or in any way negative about telling the story of the bad things they did, because the harm to them, of me telling the story, does not compare to the harm they did to me, that resulted in me telling those stories.

EB: Right, like what’s that Anne Lamott quote? “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

MT: But trying to navigate through the complexities of that has been really hard. I didn’t consult my parents, but I felt I needed to consult Ralph and Richard. It’s easier if you feel like you are going to talk to everyone or nobody about the book—but trying to introspect who is justified in being consulted is hard. It’s an ongoing concern in my work. Part of the reason, actually, that my dad and I got back in touch was when I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, the Times asked me to get in touch with my dad—he said he trusted my perspective even if the article made him look bad; that was part of our healing process together. But definitely writing about other people is the most challenging.

The most rewarding part is you get to know more about yourself. You get paid to learn more about yourself. You get both permission and an audience in return for you taking the time to explore your own psyche. And that’s such an enormous gift. I’ve become a better person since I’ve written Fairest, in part because I so much better understand myself. I understand the mistakes I’ve made.

EB: Finally, what is a favorite passage of nonfiction by a fellow non-man writer?

MT: I will read you my favorite passage in all of trans memoir, which I kept bookmarked and with me the entire time I wrote Fairest, and would turn to whenever I needed inspiration. It’s from Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There, and even though our experiences are distinctly different, I’m deeply struck by the way she exemplifies how trans people draw on our imaginations and creativity to reshape a world that doesn’t want us, and am also touched by how Jenny moves so sinuously through the journey of her transition so that a passage about her childhood also becomes one about the entirety of her life:

Sometimes I played a game in the woods called “girl planet.” In it, I was an astronaut who had crashed on an uninhabited world. There was a large fallen tree I used as the crashed-and-destroyed rocket. The thing was, though, that anybody who breathed the air on this planet turned into a girl. There was nothing you could do about it, it just happened. My clothes turned into a girl’s clothes, too, which should give an indication of exactly how powerful the atmosphere was. It changed your clothes! Once female, I walked through the cobblestone woods, past the abandoned houses, until I arrived at Governor Earle’s mansion, which I started to try to fix up. It took years, but eventually I had a nice little place put together. By the time astronauts from planet Earth came to rescue me, I had grown into a mature woman, a college professor, occasionally playing piano in blues bands, kissing my children good night as they lay asleep in their beds. My rescuers would say, “We’re looking for James Finney Boylan, the novelist. We found his rocket all smashed up back there in the woods. Do you know where he is, ma’am?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s gone now.”