Interview with Gabriella Karlton

Monika: Today I have invited Gabriella Karlton. She is a Belgian model and proud transgender woman who shares her life moments on social media. Hello Gabriella! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Gabriella: Hello, nice to be with you!

Monika: Could you say a few words about yourself?

Gabriella: Of course. As said previously, I am Belgian, I was born and have lived all my life in this small, somewhat complex country. I love cooking, exercising, and shopping. I'm also keen on art history and architecture... In the end, I think I'm a pretty ordinary woman.

Interview with Bernadette Wagenblast

Monika: Bernadette Wagenblast, also known as The Voice of the Subway, is an American transportation journalist, radio personality, and voice-over artist. She is the founder and editor of the Transportation Communications Newsletter and the voice of various transportation facilities in New York City, such as the AirTrain and the Subway. She was active in her college’s radio station, WSOU, where she served as the news director and station manager. She also appeared on several New York City radio stations over five years, including WINS and WABC. She later joined the New York City Department of Transportation, where she helped to establish the city’s first transportation communications center. Hello Bernadette! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Bernadette: Thank you for the invitation, Monika!

Interview with Addie Danielle

Monika: Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Addie Danielle, a remarkable woman from Nova Scotia, Canada, who has been sharing her transition journey with the world on social media. Addie’s story is one of resilience, self-discovery, and embracing authenticity, which she documents in the hopes of inspiring others. Through her posts, she offers a unique and candid look into the challenges and triumphs of being a trans woman. Hello, Addie! I’m so grateful that you agreed to join me for this conversation.

Addie: Thank you so much for the invitation! I’m honored to be able to share a bit of my journey with you.

Monika: Could you say a few words about yourself?

Addie: I’m a 33-year-old Trans woman from Atlantic Canada. I’m the General Manager of a boutique corporate audio-visual company that specializes in press conferences, live streams, internal meetings, etc. I’ve been working in the event production industry in some capacity for 12 years. I live alone in a quiet neighborhood outside the city with two crazy dogs and I spend my free time hiking, paddling, and restaurant/cafe hopping.

Interview with Alessandra Alferes

Monika: My lovely guest today is Alessandra Alferes, a transactivist, content creator, pianist, and mother of two children from São Paulo, Brazil. She is a screenwriter, producer, director, and editor of the TransSaber channel and presenter of the VídeoCast “Café Trans”. Hello Ale! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Ale: Hello, Monika! Thank you for the opportunity!

Monika: You are a woman of many talents. Could you say a few words about yourself?

Ale: I am a musician, conductor at UNESP, and professor of Music, Languages, Public Speaking and Performance. I have a specialization in Teaching and another in Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations. I give lectures on the LGBTQIAPN+ agenda at universities and schools and participate in podcasts as a guest, in addition to producing my own podcast through the TransSaber Channel. I am also the "mama" of a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl.

Interview with Lucy Sante

Lucy Sante is a Belgian-born American writer, critic, artist, and one of the most distinctive cultural voices of her generation, known for her ability to illuminate hidden histories and overlooked details with precision, empathy, and wit. A longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books, she has written influential works that move effortlessly between social history, memoir, photography, music, and film, including the landmark Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York and later books such as The Other Paris, Nineteen Reservoirs, and Maybe the People Would Be the Times. Born in Verviers, Belgium, and raised in the United States, Sante’s career has unfolded across many disciplines, from writing lyrics for the Del-Byzanteens and consulting on Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York to exhibiting her own collages and teaching generations of writers and photographers at Bard College. Across her work, she has shown a rare talent for connecting personal memory with collective experience, often focusing on marginal spaces, vanished worlds, and the quiet poetry of everyday life.

 

Her writing is marked by intellectual rigor as well as a deep affection for the strange, the forgotten, and the unfashionable. She has also played an important role as a cultural translator, bringing overlooked voices and images into sharper focus through editing, translation, and critical commentary. As a teacher, she influenced countless students by encouraging attentiveness, curiosity, and ethical engagement with history and images. Her contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Grammy for album notes, and prestigious fellowships from institutions such as the MacDowell Colony and the New York Public Library. In recent years, her work has taken on an especially intimate and resonant dimension with I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, a candid and beautifully crafted account of coming out and transitioning later in life, a book widely praised for its honesty and literary grace, named one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2024 and shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. This interview explores Lucy Sante’s life, work, and evolving sense of self, as well as the curiosity and courage that continue to shape her remarkable journey.

Interview with Hazel Krebs

Monika: Hazel Krebs, a proud American transgender woman and a mother of two incredible kids, is my lovely guest today. Hazel is a writer, speaker, and transadvocate. She is the author of “Enthusiastically Me“ (2024), a book about her journey towards womanhood. Hello Hazel! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Hazel: Thank you, Monika! I am ecstatic for this opportunity!

Monika: Could you say a few words about yourself?

Hazel: Sure! My name is Hazel, and I am unapologetically me! Recently, I published a book that discusses the hardships I faced after growing up in a world that didn’t know the real me.

In the beginning, I was assigned male at birth in Omaha, Nebraska. I grew up in what I consider a fairly typical midwestern situation, characterized by traditional expectations, which influenced me into adulthood. I went to college, found someone I eventually married, then had two kids. I adore my kids and co-parent, from whom I have since separated. These are the three most important people in my life.

Interview with Michelle Karas

 

For Michelle Karas, the meaning of freedom is not an abstract idea. It is something lived, defended, and dreamed of in the middle of uncertainty. A Ukrainian transactivist and social media influencer, Michelle has experienced the personal struggle for self-acceptance alongside the much larger struggle unfolding around her. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the ordinary rhythm of her life, work, friendships, and plans was suddenly interrupted by explosions, air raid alarms, and the realization that safety could no longer be taken for granted. Yet Michelle's story is not defined only by war. Long before the invasion, she had been learning what it meant to insist on being herself in a society where trans people could still face rejection, hostility, and misunderstanding. She describes a childhood marked by femininity, bullying, and physical abuse, followed by the painful rejection of her family after she began hormone therapy. At one of the most difficult moments of her life, the support of transgender friends helped her keep going. That experience eventually became part of something larger. Michelle began speaking publicly about transgender lives because she wanted to educate people and challenge prejudice. Messages of support from people who had previously been unaccepting showed her that sharing her own story could change minds.

 

On social media, she now answers questions from people seeking information about transition and offers the kind of encouragement and practical knowledge that she once needed herself. There is also a distinctly personal side to Michelle's story. She speaks openly about learning to love herself, about the confidence that compliments can bring, about the pleasure of makeup and the color purple, and about choosing clothes simply because she likes them rather than following fashion. Even her name carries a memory from childhood, given to her by a physics teacher and eventually adopted as her own. Through all of these experiences runs a simple conviction: being transgender should not reduce a person's dreams. Michelle imagines a future in which Ukraine is free and democratic, and in which people can live as themselves without society telling them who they are allowed to be. Her story is therefore about much more than transition. It is about resilience, belonging, self-love, friendship, and the determination to remain human in circumstances that can make humanity feel frighteningly fragile.

Interview with Vanessa Joy

Monika: Today I have invited Vanessa Joy, an American podcast hostess, transactivist, and politician. Vanessa is known for participating in Transcending Humanity, a podcast group of Transgender/Nonbinary/Gender friends, and her Vanesstradiol YouTube channel where she chronicles her transition. A couple of weeks ago, she ran as a Democratic candidate for the Ohio House District 50, but was disqualified from the ballot for omitting her previous name. Joy was one of four transgender candidates running for state office in Ohio, largely in response to proposed restrictions of the rights of LGBTQ+ people. She is also the stepdaughter of GOP state Representative Bill Roemer. Hello Vanessa! Thank you for accepting my invitation.

Vanessa: Thank you for reaching out!

Monika: It has been a couple of weeks since you were disqualified from the ballot. It must have been a bitter experience. 

Vanessa: It was very disappointing, yes. I was caught completely off guard; I figured that if I was going to be disqualified it would have been because I did have enough valid signatures. I did have enough, this obscure law was a complete surprise. It was too many people, really, which is why it became such big news for four weeks!