Project
Transchool
2023—Present
An introductory course in trans studies and writing for aspiring trans writers.
2025 course supported by Pop Mart and the Lorna Jordan Foundation.
Questions?
transchool@alliesinarts.org
We are thrilled to release Transchool: Volume 1!
Published by Co—Conspirator Press with the support of Feminist Center for Creative Work and Allies in Arts.
Transchool: Volume 1 is an anthology featuring the multifaceted work — poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, genre-defying writing — by the first class of Transchool creative writers and their mentors, including Ali Liebegott, Andrea Jenkins, Thomas Page McBee, and Qwo-Li Driskill, with introduction letters from Chase Strangio and Kyle Lasky of @Transanta, Drew Denny, and Ren Heintz. Allies in Arts founded Transchool to empower the voices of trans writers ages 18-24.
“The stories that you will read in this book are a product of what happens when trans people get to craft their stories in a safe and open space. This book will allow other trans people to see their stories reflected back to them.” – Dr. Ren Heintz
Support Trans Voices
How can we affirm queer youth in public space during this vulnerable time in their lives? Six queer and trans BIPOC artists designed affirming messages for trans youth, written by Transchool students.
What’s Transchool?
Inspired by the letters written to Transanta, this summer course for young trans writers offers college-level instruction and mentorship.
Twice a week throughout Pride month, aspiring trans writers 18-24 based in the US will have the opportunity to craft their voice and put their narratives to paper in an introductory course in trans studies and trans writing.
After completing the course and workshopping their creative pieces, their work will be published in an edited collection of trans narratives.
Course Details
2025 class starts in June! Applications will open in the spring.
In order to participate, you must be an 18 to 24 year old, US-based trans writer. This course is completely free and all students will be paid a stipend!
For the June month of Pride, participants will meet twice a week on Zoom with Gender Studies and English Professor Dr. Ren Heintz (they/them). The class will take you through an introductory exploration of trans studies and trans writing, in which we will read from our trans elders and contemporaries, such as Kate Bornstein and Ivan Coyote, and from award winning poets like Cameron Awkward-Rich and Andrea Jenkins. We will learn how trans folks have told their stories before us so that we can have the courage to tell our own stories now. Participants will practice writing their own personal stories, creative imaginaries, or poetic tales through writing exercises and in class workshops. The course will also have drop-in guest sessions, with cameos from prominent trans writers and activists. In the aftermath of the course, participants will be given the chance to have their stories published in an edited collection of trans narratives created by the Transchool students and mentors.
Participants will be meeting on Zoom twice weekly for 90 minute class sessions, and will need to have access to a stable internet connection, as well as a video and microphone capable computer. Participants will need to fit these classes into their weekly schedule.
In order to support your ability to commit this time to furthering your education, each participant will be compensated with an honorarium. Just to make that point clear—this course is completely free! And all students will be paid a stipend in order to help them make time for learning. Finally, you will be mailed a course kit, complete with all of the books you will read, a notebook, pens, a queer journal, a queer tarot deck (because, of course), and a craft packet for drawing and other creative expressions. Our goal is to remove financial barriers that prohibit young trans writers from accessing educational experiences, so we will provide all assigned texts and materials free of charge.
Transchool is led by Dr. Ren Heintz.
Ren Heintz is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities at Cal State Los Angeles. Heintz received their Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, and their MA from the University of Pennsylvania. Heintz's scholarship has appeared in American Quarterly, GLQ, Feminist Media Histories, and TSQ, among others. Their working manuscript is titled The Obscenity of White Supremacy: The Antebellum History of Gender and Sexuality.They were awarded the Richard H. Brown/William Lloyd Barber Long-Term Fellowship at the Newberry Library and the Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from Tulane University. Through their public humanities work, they are the inaugural creative writing instructor for the nonprofit initiative, Transchool. Heintz is the editor of the anthology Transchool: Vol. 1 (Co-Conspirator Press, 2024).
Supported in 2025 by
Course archive
2024 Mentors
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two collections of poetry: Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). His creative work has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation. His more critical writing can be found in Signs, Transgender Studies Quarterly, American Quarterly and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from Duke University and the ACLS. Presently, he is an associate professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Esti Giordani
Esti Giordani is a Los Angeles based writer and producer. In addition to being a published author, Esti has written on an upcoming Apple TV+ series starring Owen Wilson as well as on multiple seasons of Vida (Starz) and I Love Dick (Amazon). As a producer, Esti worked on the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning series, Transparent. Esti lives in Los Angeles with two chihuahuas.
Generously supported by the Hollister Confidence Project, the California Arts Council, and a local impact grant from NBCUniversal and Telemundo.
torrin a. greathouse
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist. Her work is published in POETRY, New York Times Magazine, Copper Nickel, and The Kenyon Review. They are the author of Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020), winner of the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and DEED (Wesleyan University Press, 2024). She teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Amos Mac
Amos Mac brings two decades of interdisciplinary work to the table as a writer, visual artist, magazine editor, and independent publisher. Mac currently works as a producer and screenwriter for film and television, including two seasons of GOSSIP GIRL (HBO Max), the process documentary NO ORDINARY MAN, and the forthcoming Laverne Cox comedy series CLEAN SLATE (Amazon). Mac gained prominence in art book publishing in 2009 as a founding editor of ORIGINAL PLUMBING, the first U.S. magazine dedicated to the culture and community of trans men. Featuring Mac's photography and writing, Original Plumbing concluded its ten-year run with a book, ORIGINAL PLUMBING: THE BEST OF TEN YEARS OF TRANS MALE CULTURE, published by The Feminist Press.
Sylvan Oswald
Sylvan Oswald (he/him) is a writer who creates text-based projects exploring trans identity, history, and nonviolent dramaturgy. Sylvan started writing roles for gender nonconforming people in 2000. Starting with the idea of a pants role, he later included roles for butch people, and today centers trans and nonbinary characters. His projects include Trainers: A Theatrical Essay (Gate Theatre, London, Oberon Books); High Winds (PICA's TBA Festival, Fusebox Festival, Yale's Theater Magazine, X Artists' Books), the essay "Towards a Trans Theater;" "Cut Piece", a personal history of play publishing; Play A Journal of Plays (2003-2011); and Outtakes, a web series. Plays include A Kind of Weather (Diversionary Theater, San Diego), Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb, New York), and Pony (About Face Theater, Chicago). A recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for 2019-20, a Soho Rep Dorothy Strelsin Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, a Rosati Fellowship from the Rubinstein Library at Duke University, and residencies at MacDowell and Sundance/UCross, Sylvan is an alumnus of New Dramatists and now heads the playwriting program at UCLA. sylvanoswald.xyz
Supported in 2024 by
2023 Mentors
Qwo-Li Driskill
Qwo-Li Driskill is a poet, performer, activist, and educator. They are the author of Walking with Ghosts: Poems and Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory. They are also the co-editor of Soveriegn Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature and Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature. They are an Associate Professor of Queer Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University. They are currently working on their second poetry collection How to Make a Tear Dress.
Andrea Jenkins
Andrea Jenkins is a soulful poet, educator, artist, respected historian and political powerhouse. In 2017 she became the 1st out Black Trans woman elected to public office in the United States She is President of the Minneapolis City Council.
She holds a Masters Degree in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University, a Masters of Fine Arts from Hamline University, and Bachelors Degree from Metropolitan State University. Additionally she completed the Senior Government and Executive Leadership program at Harvard University.
She has been featured in TIME Magazine, Essence, Teen Vogue, The New York Times, The Guardian, Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine. In 2022 she was named on the OUT100 list by OUT Magazine, Twin Cities Business 100 People to Know, and Fast Company Top 50 Queers.
Ali Liebegott
Ali Liebegott is a writer and painter. She has published four books: The Beautifully Worthless, The IHOP Papers, Cha-Ching! and The Summer of Dead Birds. Her most recent solo painting "Rooms and Other Feelings" was at Ochi Gallery in Los Angeles.
Thomas Mcbee
Thomas Page McBee is an award-winning author, journalist, and writer/producer--most recently on THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, and many other publications. In the course of reporting his most recent book, AMATEUR, Thomas became the first trans man to ever fight in Madison Square Garden. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and dogs.
Jaclyn Moore
Supported in 2023 by