The Fifty Shades of Gender project started with a book idea.
When the Fifty Shades of Grey* book was all the rage (to be honest, I (Esther) got bored halfway through book 2) a variety of projects started to emerge, such as Fifty Shades of Gay, and Fifty Shades of Feminism.
Then, we (Esther and Katy) had an idea.
Why don’t we collect fifty stories of gender-diverse people, all local to Norwich, and put them together in a book?
At the time, we wanted to call it Fifty Shades of Trans – until a friend suggested we call it Fifty Shades of Gender. When we got over the fact that we wanted it to be one syllable (because #pedants), we agreed that they had a point 🙂
The desire to create this book, besides celebrating people and their stories, is to show the gender diversity in just one city. What with the amount of gender-diverse people I’ve met in the past seven years (since I met Katy), we could probably fill at least six books for Norwich alone!
*Note: Those of you who are making a connection with Fifty Shades of Grey (you’d be forgiven, since three out of four words are the same) may be thinking this will be a book full of whips and sex and red rooms of pain, but that’s not our focus (nothing wrong with all that, of course). It’s going to be a collection of stories from people in various places in their gender journey. That said, if they happen to be into BDSM, the subject may come up in conversation. At least, I hope so. 😉
Click on the image(s) below to read a chapter. More to come!
