Cameron Awkward-Rich Libri

The exploration of trans identity and its intersection with madness, illness, and disability forms the core of this work. Awkward-Rich critiques the disavowal of these themes in trans studies, advocating for a trans criticism that embraces maladjustment. By examining the historical context of transgender and disabled identities in the early twentieth century and analyzing contemporary transmasculine literature, he argues that embracing these complexities can illuminate the intricate relationships between trans, feminist, and queer discourses, ultimately enriching their evolution.

Observing that trans studies was founded on a split from and disavowal of madness, illness, and disability, Cameron Awkward-Rich argues for and models a trans criticism that works against this disavowal.

Winner of the 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, Cameron Awkward-Rich’s intimate second book of poems attempts to reckon with and withstand American violence. Set against the media environment that saturates even our most intimate spaces, Dispatch attends to, revises, and thinks adjacent to the news of racial/gendered violence in the US, from the nineteenth century to the present day. These poems ask: What kind of revisions will make this a world/a story that is concerned with my people’s flourishing? How ought I pay attention, how to register perpetual bad news without letting it fatally intrude? Cameron Awkward-Rich is among the most bracing voices to emerge in recent years, a dazzling exemplar of poetry’s (and humanity’s) possibilities.