The Beatrix Gates

Rachel Pollack is a sorceress, a wizard with words who spins together the spiritual, the political, and the passionate in her unique, indeed inimitable, tales. An award-winning SF and Fantasy author, she is also an esteemed Tarot Grand Master with devotees and students around the world. A progressive voice in the transgender community and a trusted guide to the ancient traditions of shamanism, she writes of shimmering and dangerous worlds that have never been imagined before—much less explored. Her queer cult favorite “The Beatrix Gates” draws on magic realism, quantum science, memoir, and myth to tell the story of a girl born not in the wrong body but in the wrong universe.

Plus… “Trans Central Station,” written especially for this volume, is Pollack’s personal and penetrating take on the transgender experience then and now—and tomorrow? “Burning Beard” is a fiercely revisionist Old Testament tale of plague and prophecy told through a postmodern prose of, shall we say, many colors. “The Woman Who Didn’t Come Back” is about just what it says it’s about.

And Featuring: Our Outspoken Interview, which tells us all about comics history, the automotive origins of Tarot, the benefits of Nerd celebrity, and why the Sun exists. It will be on the test.

Praise:

• “Rachel Pollack’s The Beatrix Gates is a marvelous example of how sci-fi can remythologize the terms of common experience to elucidate and give new and deeper meaning.”  —Lambda Book Report
• “The Beatrix Gates is a stunning study in identity and mutability. It can be read most easily as a story about transexualism or simply a powerful examination of difference and its more positive consequences, as well as a subtle investigation of exactly what makes our identities.”  —Green Man Review
• “One of the most gifted and sensitive fantasists working today.”  —Publishers Weekly
• “Rachel Pollack is one of the most consistently interesting and individual writers working in the fantasy and science fiction slipstream. Here be magick, real people, alternative worlds, and a fully mature creative consciousness.”  —Geoff Ryman, author of WAS

About the Author:
Rachel Pollack melds the literary, the political, and the spiritual in her own unique way. An award-winning SF and fantasy author (Unquenchable Fire and Godmother Night), she is also an esteemed Tarot Grand Master with followers and students around the world. A progressive voice in the transgender community and a trusted guide to the ancient traditions of spiritualism, she has been for decades a teacher of writing at Goddard College.