Julia Serano

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, performer, and activist. She is best known for her 2007 book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, which readers of Ms. Magazine ranked #16 on their list of the "100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time." Her other books include 2013's Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (which was a finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction) and 2016's Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism (which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction). Julia's other writings have appeared in over a dozen anthologies, and in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, TIME, Salon, The Daily Beast, AlterNet, Out, and Ms. Julia's life experiences as a bisexual trans woman, and her understanding of biology (she has a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Columbia University, and spent seventeen years as a researcher at UC Berkeley in the fields of genetics, evolution and developmental biology), gives her a unique perspective on gender and sexuality, and her writings have been used as teaching materials in colleges across North America. In addition to her nonfiction work, Julia sometimes pens silly, surreal, sex-positive fiction under the name Kat Cataclysm, and her debut novel based on that character (entitled 99 Erics: a Kat Cataclysm faux novel) will be published on Switch Hitter Press in February, 2020. More info at juliaserano.com.