Check out our interview with Rainie Oet below, who wrote "Glitch Girl!"
What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?
I'm dreaming of a world that exists already. My trans heart is an endless planet that dreams itself alive with every beat.
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
Books are portals into other realities that challenge and/or mirror and/or provide an escape from our own. "Glitch Girl!" has its own portals: when J— escapes into her roller coaster park building computer game, it's the only place that she feels any kind of freedom; but it's lonely, too. I think we write and read books so that we can jump in and out of freedom and connection, coming to love ourselves and each other more and more.
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
Trans women have written so many incredible books, but they're often not platformed in any real way. The book world often makes tokens of us and pats itself on the back for it. Representation is not my responsibility as a writer. There's already a lifetime's worth of amazing trans stories — no one could ever get through them all. Rather, the responsibility of representation lies in the gatekeepers of culture, from publishers, to readers, to reviewers — basically everyone except for the hypermarginalized underclasses that fascism scapegoats first for annihilation. Until the cis world truly sees us as complex human beings rather than just stories to be represented, cis people will be missing life; it will pass them by and eventually they will die without ever having glimpsed it.
Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.
I wanted to write a book that would go back in time and save my life sooner than my life was saved. I had a lot of fun writing it.
What can fans expect from your book?
The opportunity for an empathic kinship with one particular interiority; a small glimpse of an immense space.
What's up next for you in the bookish world?
Something about trans women in haunted houses, where the houses are haunted by yearning rather than grief.
