PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 As the street hummed below with the activity of passing cars and the excitement and ready-made plans of conversations after work on a Friday, the second floor of Giovanni\u2019s Room in the Gayborhood was locked in relative quiet as those gathered bore witness to a new collection of local writers announcing themselves to the city.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As a few dozen packed the cozy space lined by bookcases, some of those writers shared their works of fiction. Some were created at another point in their fiction-writing careers, but most of the shared work came from a zine that all the writers created together over the last few months.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlamouring\u201d<\/a> is the first zine from The Philly Fictionists, a group of local trans fiction writers who met at a retreat organized by Julian Shendelman<\/a>. He\u2019s a local writer and editor, and ever since moving to Philadelphia, he\u2019s dreamed of gathering a collective of trans writers to share and create works of fiction. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re out here, there\u2019s a lot of us,\u201d Shendelman said. \u201cI think Philly is a particularly trans city and it\u2019s also a particularly literary city, and the middle of that Venn diagram is not as connected as it could be.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not naive to think he\u2019s the first person in the city to ever gather a cohort of trans fiction writers and put out a zine of their work, \u201cbut there wasn\u2019t anything at this moment,\u201d and a grant from the Leeway Foundation was the \u201ckick\u201d Shendelman said he needed to put his plan into action.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say that if you don\u2019t see the thing you want in the world, you should go make it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In his introduction to \u201cGlamouring,\u201d Shendelman said 42 local trans writers applied to be a part of The Philly Fictionists\u2019 first cohort, and 12 were eventually accepted. They met for their retreat at a local university back in January, and the prospect of putting out a zine with their work arose out of the energy brought by the group for the project.<\/p>\n \u201cI was really excited, honestly just thrilled and honored that people were willing to chip in so much labor,\u201d said Shendelman. \u201cIt made me feel really good and made me feel really cared for and part of a community.\u201d<\/p>\n Malachi Lily\u2019s work<\/a> adorns the cover of \u201cGlamouring,\u201d and they said their experience as part of the cohort was \u201cdeeply nourishing,\u201d and they left with a host of new friends.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of beautiful because I had been reflecting about how residencies, fellowships, things like that tend to be very exploitative towards writers and artists, and not very considerate of the things we actually need,\u201d Lily said. \u201cAnd the things that Julian did were like the opposite of that.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to paying members of the cohort for their time, Shendelman said the grant funding also allowed them to pay for food.<\/p>\n