Interview with Holly

Monika: Today’s interview will be with Holly, a transgender woman that documents her transition on Reddit.com as mikah_rowan. Hello Holly!

Holly: Hello Monika and thank you for this opportunity to share a bit about myself and my experiences.

Monika: Could you say a few words about yourself?

Holly: Okay, so I was born in 1962 in Connecticut, the USA, not too far from New York City. My father died when I was only six months old, and my mother remarried before I can even remember. I had a brother six years older than me and a sister three years older. I realized that I was transgender at a very early age, even though to me, it had no name yet.

As soon as I was aware of being a human being and seeing the differences between boys and girls, men and women, I knew that I was a girl and that I would grow up to be a woman. But something was wrong. My mom kept dressing me in little boys' clothes and giving me boys' toys to play with. I would take my boys' clothing off and go to my sister's dresser and put on her clothes.

Interview with Susan Jane Bigelow

Monika: Today let me present Susan Jane Bigelow, an American transgender writer, librarian, political columnist, and author of "Ramona’s Demons", featured in Topside Press: “The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard”. Susan writes a weekly political column for the outstanding Connecticut political news website, CT News Junkie, where she focuses on politics inside and relevant to the Nutmeg State. In 2005-2010, she wrote for the Connecticut political blog CT Local Politics. Hello Susan!

Susan: Hello, Monika! Thank you for having me.

Monika: Could you say a few words about yourself?

Susan: Sure. I’m a librarian, a political columnist, and a writer. I live with my wife in the northeastern United States. I’m the author of the Extrahumans series, the Grayline Sisters series, and you can find my writing in QUEERS DIG TIME LORDS as well as the Topside Press COLLECTION.

Monika: How did you start writing?

Susan: I’ve always been a writer, even when I was little. I would make up stories, and my mother would encourage me to write them down. I can’t imagine myself without writing at this point.