An award winning writer since age 16, I am committed to discussing topics ranging from gender theory to water management to queer history to scientific dogma to political narratives to literature to rhetoric.
Ultimately, I am interested in illuminating the inextricable connections between things that many people assume are unrelated. I am fascinated by the threads that simultaneously connect us and bind us, and more importantly, how those threads can be pulled or twisted to change the future.
Everything is connected, context matters, and this account attempts to follow the threads between different forces that, cumulatively, shape our lives and societies.
Originally from an Appalachian family in central Pennsylvania, I grew up fascinated by nature. I was often found wandering the woods searching to observe wildlife, investigating rocks, and picking up bones. I witnessed firsthand the devastation of intertwined environmental, economic, sociological and political devastation of Appalachia.
As a teenager realizing my queerness, yet trapped within a family and church who were extremely hostile to difference, I turned to history. I read archives of queer zines from the 50s through the 2000s, from the Mattachine Society to the Sisters of Bilitis to Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries to ACT UP! to Marriage Equality USA.
My love of the environment and of humanity led me to train as an environmental scientist and ecologist with a specialty in public health, epidemiology and hydrology, dabbling in a wide variety of disciplines from viral ecology to family studies.
Struggling with severe, undiagnosed mental illness, unsupported neurodivergence and unrecognized physical disability since I was a child, I learned firsthand that systems are built to protect power, not people.
In 2020, I pivoted my career towards political advocacy and grassroots organizing, using my writing, speaking, and leadership skills to contribute towards meeting the moment we find ourselves in.
Before leaving Twitter in protest of Musk, I accumulated over 35,000 followers there and went viral repeatedly. Most notably, I am often recognized as “that guy from the Appalachian Mountains thread”, which went to Twitter’s front page and made the word “Appalachia” trend in 2021. I used this success to launch the Trans Formations Project at age 24, a grassroots collective to track and inform about the anti-trans legislative crisis in the United States. (https://www.transformationsproject.org/) My work at TFP lead to receiving the 20th anniversary iteration of the National Center for Transgender Equality's 2023 Founder's Award for Leadership and Advocacy.
Most recently, I have become an internal political refugee, moving from Missouri to California with my husband and our cats to escape state persecution from the state of Missouri.
I am now 28 years old, and through it all, I have written. The words come like a flood, unstoppable, all-consuming, potentially fatal. As I am often noted to say, “the words are never big enough, but they’re all I have.”
In the heart of empire, there is always a genocide on. The coming times will appall and shock many who chose to turn away rather than confront the humanity of others, and their own inhumanity of a response. But the world is vast, in its joys and its sorrows. Our great tragedy and our great salvation are one and the same; that we are all here together regardless. So this is an attempt to describe what I know, what I see, what I witness. To what end? To educate others, to arm them with the truth, to contribute to the tapestry of human experience, sure.
Ultimately, though, this is an attempt at the most paramount, the most prevailing and mundane human desire; to connect. To be seen. To be heard. To shout, small as you are, “WE ARE HERE!” and pray to everything you believe in that you will, somehow, against all odds, be loved for it.
They say the truth will set you free. I agree, ostensibly.
The truth will set you free, yes. But you have to cut yourself out of the lies that bind you. Like being born, it’s violent, it’s painful, and it’s lonely. It’s also the only way to truly live. The truth is a weapon. Here, I hand you the blade.
