Fran Fried is an American writer, editor, DJ, music lover, community advocate, and, most authentically, a trans woman whose journey into self‑discovery began in her mid‑40s. Born and raised in Prospect, Connecticut, and initially a top‑performing sportswriter and music critic, Fran spent over two decades working for regional papers before accepting a move to Fresno, California. There, a deeply personal epiphany in January 2008 launched her transition, starting with hormones in 2010 and a courageous public coming‑out that same year. Throughout her evolution, Fran has balanced life’s highs and lows, job losses, family tension, relocation, and health struggles, while forging a resilient path of authenticity.
She founded the blog Franorama World, hosted a web‑radio show since 2013, and lent her voice to documentaries and public speaking engagements about trans lives and healthcare. Her op‑eds in publications like The New York Times and the New Haven Register have championed trans rights, coinciding with legislative progress in Connecticut. In addition to her editorial and creative work, Fran has spoken on trans and gender issues at universities and nursing classes, contributed to policy discussions, and staked her claim in media visibility, as one of the few openly trans contestants on Jeopardy! (pending airing in October). Fran's story is a testament to raw courage, the power of living one’s truth at any age, and the ongoing journey of finding your place, and your voice, in a world that’s still learning to listen.
Monika: Today, I have the pleasure and honor of interviewing Fran Fried, a brilliant editor, writer, blogger, DJ, music fiend, friend, daughter, and, as she modestly puts it, an accidental civil rights activist from Prospect, Connecticut. Welcome, Fran!
Fran: Hi, Monika! Thank you so much for reaching out, and for including me among such amazing company. I'm truly honored and, honestly, a little touched.
Monika: Let’s begin with a question that’s both broad and personal. How would you introduce yourself to someone who has never met you?
Fran: Well, I’m a writer, an editor, a DJ, a daughter, a sister, a good friend, and, oh, yeah, by the way, I’m trans. I’m out and about in the everyday world, and if you don’t know me, chances are you won’t read me. As far as I can tell, with my friends, being trans is just incidental; first and foremost, to them, as well as myself, I’m Fran. The gender dysphoria is just one facet of an interesting life, a big, honking facet, but still, just one nonetheless. It's one aspect of who I am, not the whole story.
Monika: Can you share a bit about your early years and where you grew up?
Fran: At the time of this interview (summer 2017), I just turned 56 (spiritually 30). I was born in Brooklyn (Greenpoint, 40 years before it became hip and overpriced). We moved when I was 4 to Prospect, a town in southwest-central Connecticut, two hours northeast of NYC and about 25 minutes northwest of New Haven; it has nearly 10,000 people, four traffic lights, and four pizza joints, and, last year, a lot of Trump lawn signs. It was a quiet town where you couldn't exactly hide, even if you wanted to.
Monika: What was your family and educational background like?
Fran: I grew up an A-student and a good Catholic boy to devout parents (altar boy for eight years at the church up the street, four years of Catholic high school in neighboring Waterbury). I also grew up hearing “You faggot!” and variations thereof, not because I was overtly femme (which I wasn’t), but because I was slight, blonde, sensitive, and one of the smartest kids in class. Needless to say, childhood and much of adolescence were torture. Still, school was a refuge where I found intellectual stimulation and occasional sanctuary.
Monika: How did you cope with bullying and early signs of dysphoria during adolescence?
Fran: I somehow managed to not fully give in to the depression that kicked in full-on not long after puberty. By the time I headed to college, I wanted to be a sportswriter, a music writer, and a DJ. And I got to be all three. Despite the bullying, I held onto a vision of what I wanted to do and clung to it for survival.
Monika: What did your college years look like?
Fran: I got a B.A. in Communications at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University; I hosted a late-night new wave show at the campus radio station and was a work-study intern in the school’s PR/sports information office. (And it was at that job my senior year, through a chain of events, that I became the catalyst behind Jackie Gleason releasing the “Lost Episodes” of The Honeymooners.) My college life gave me the creative outlet I desperately needed.
Monika: How did your professional journalism career begin?
Fran: I worked nearly 10 years at my hometown paper, the Waterbury Republican-American. (And the publisher’s politics are every bit as vile as the name implies.) For six years, I was a sportswriter: high school sports and amateur golf tournaments, some occasional New York Giants, Jets, Yankees, and Mets games, and for 2½ seasons I was the Hartford Whalers beat writer. Journalism quickly became both my passion and my armor.
Monika: When did you transition to covering entertainment and music?
Fran: I was freelancing album reviews and a music column for the paper, and the higher-ups created a full-time entertainment writer opening, so in early 1990 I moved over to features, where I could cheer in the press box. It was a welcome shift from locker rooms to green rooms.
Monika: What was your experience like at the New Haven Register?
Fran: In late summer 1992, I moved on to the New Haven Register as its entertainment editor/music writer. (I was living in New Haven and part of the alt-music scene there.) I put out the paper’s Weekend section on Fridays and I interviewed hundreds of artists, from legends to locals. (The shortlist includes Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, Luciano Pavarotti, Sonny Rollins, Nancy Wilson, Dave Brubeck, Little Richard, and Paul Giamatti, a New Haven native.) That chapter was as exhausting as it was exhilarating.
Monika: What prompted your move to California?
Fran: In September 2003 I got an email from the then-features editor at The Fresno Bee, asking if I’d be interested in being an assistant features editor there. It was one of the largest papers in California, McClatchy was then one of the best companies in the business, people weren’t offering me great jobs every day, and I knew, as I entered middle age, that this was the one big chance I’d have to make a change in my life. California felt like a new horizon, though I had no idea just how new.
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Fran Fried at Get to the Point! (YouTube) |
Monika: When did you realize you had to transition?
Fran: And here’s why you’re interviewing me … January 9, 2008, was the night of my Epiphany. I came home from work, too tired to even turn on Jeopardy! as I usually did. I threw my coat on the bed, sat down at the foot of the bed, looked at the closet … and heard a voice ask, “Can you do this?” That whisper shook me to my core.
Monika: What was the nature of that internal voice?
Fran: I have this weird voice of reason that comes to me at crucial points in my life, a creepy whisper, almost like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well, on this winter night in 2008, HAL came to visit, and the voice sounded as if it were out-of-body, and I turned sharply to my left as it said, simply, “Can you do this?” And I knew what it was asking me. It was like my subconscious refusing to let me live in denial any longer.
Monika: How did you reflect on your childhood feelings about gender?
Fran: Like most of us under the umbrella, I knew at a very young age that I was at least different somehow. But I never felt I was in the wrong body as much as I was spiritually one of the girls. (I’m pre-op, been on hormones since 2010, but not planning any surgery.) My affinity for “girl things” was always there, buried under layers of guilt and fear.
Monika: How did you initially react to the idea of transitioning?
Fran: I was totally caught off-guard by this inner voice. I turned around and yelled, “What are you, fucking NUTS?!? You have a respectable job, you’re a newspaper editor and you work with high school kids, and all it’s gonna take is one parent equating gender, homosexuality, and pedophilia!” That fear was both real and paralyzing in a conservative place like Fresno.
Monika: What made you finally embrace the idea of transitioning?
Fran: I heard the voice shot back, in a calmer tone: “Look, you’re 46, you’re more than halfway past your life expectancy, and you should be dead already.” (A brutal case of sleep apnea nearly killed me a few months before.) “So are you gonna find out for real or are you gonna be fat, miserable, and in the closet the rest of your life?” I sighed and said, “Okay, this is where I’m going. So how the hell do I do this?” That moment felt like choosing life over fear.
Monika: What were the first practical steps you took after that decision?
Fran: It’s easy to forget now that even with the explosion of info on the Web, there still wasn’t much info to go on for trans people in 2008. I had no roadmap, no clue how I was gonna transition. It would be, and was, a near-totally instinctual process. I took it one lipstick and thrift store at a time.
Monika: What role did your best friend play in those early days?
Fran: Since I wasn’t on a deadline, I was moving very slowly and carefully, looking at web pages and seeing what sorts of clothes would best fit my body and let me pass well; selling a couple of batches of rock T-shirts on eBay to bankroll my wardrobe and shoe closet, and starting the coming-out process with my bestie in Fresno. A week and a half later, on MLK Day, Heather went with me to San Francisco for my first girls’ day out and makeover. Her support was the first domino that gave me the courage to keep going.
Monika: How did your social circle react during your coming-out process?
Fran: I spent the rest of the year progressing slowly, perfecting how to do my face and building a wardrobe. And the coming-out accelerated that August when I went home on vacation; I told about 10 of my closest friends, including four ex-girlfriends; all were wonderfully supportive. Their acceptance gave me the courage to take more steps forward.
Monika: How did your professional situation evolve during your transition?
Fran: By Christmastime, I was out to all my friends in Fresno except my co-workers. The economy took care of that. I was discarded in March 2009, in the teeth of the depression, in McClatchy’s first round of newsroom layoffs. The rug pulled out, but in a way that also pushed me to be publicly Fran.
Monika: How did you navigate being unemployed while transitioning?
Fran: I had to really make certain in a hurry that I would be interviewing for my next job as Fran instead of Fran. But as it turned out, I had a lot more time to prepare than I wanted, I was out of work for 2½ solid years. Talk about the Twin Towers of Anxiety, Transition and Unemployment. It was a crucible that forced me to become tougher than I thought I was.
Monika: What did your support system look like during that time?
Fran: Thankfully, my circle of friends in Fresno exploded after I came out, lots of open arms literally and figuratively. It was the best surprise of the whole transition. That affirmation helped balance out the dislocation of being jobless and far from family.
Monika: You mentioned that your work situation deeply affected your transition. Could you walk me through the timeline of those years and how your employment journey intersected with your coming out?
Fran: And it probably kept me from walking into the ocean, between the uselessness and worthlessness that come with prolonged unemployment, and my coming-out process with my family 3,000 miles away. (I came out to them in September 2009, and we encountered about 14 months of weirdness, but by the end of 2010, all was well on that front.) That long-distance coming out added to the emotional weight of joblessness.
Monika: How did things change when The Bee brought you back?
Fran: The Bee brought me back in September 2011 as a part-time copy editor, again to literal and figurative open arms. But the hours dried up after Christmas, and the company cut my position at the end of June 2012. I was able to scrape up enough money from family and friends and rent a big old Penske truck and drive the 3,009 miles from the Bee parking lot to my parents’ front door that August, the home where I grew up. It was a humbling full-circle moment that felt both necessary and surreal.
Monika: How was the return to your hometown, especially after all those changes?
Fran: Here in Prospect, I have friends from childhood who know, and the rest either don’t know or don’t care. I’ve even had a couple of childhood nemeses apologize to me. But despite living near enough to one of the largest cities on the planet, the job search went just as badly back here, and I wasn’t looking at just journalism. (I’m guessing a lot has to do with ageism, the form of discrimination that’s hardest to prove but seemingly most prevalent.) It was frustrating to feel so invisible in such a big market, especially with my experience.
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Franorama World - Fran's blog. |
Monika: What was your first experience working again as your authentic self?
Fran: It took 11 months before I was hired part-time on the news copy desk at MSN in Midtown Manhattan, my first job as Frannie 2.0, where no one knew me going in. It was a huge boost for me; I thrived on the energy of the City, I got along well with my co-workers … and then Microsoft gutted the copy desk two months in. Still, those two months gave me something to hold on to during a difficult time.
END OF PART 1
All the photos: courtesy of Fran Fried.
© 2017 - Monika Kowalska
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