As a nature writer first and foremost, Callum Angus is preoccupied with narratives of change. Looming over Angus’s writing, of course, are the two most central change narratives in his life: transition and a world spinning ever faster into climate change. Writing transition alongside nature is an enticing prospect, but it presents immediate problems and pitfalls as well—nature, ecology, and the animal world offer beauty and possibility, but concepts of nature can themselves become limiting constructs, weapons, or cages. In his debut story collection, A Natural History of Transition, out April 27 from Metonymy Press, Angus insists on the necessity of new visions for the future, and new understandings of what transition can mean.

Angus’s work is full of old forms re-envisioned, from historical fiction to horror to pregnancy narratives, where transformation is an open and repeated phenomenon, without conceptual boundaries. In the worlds Angus builds, trans characters shift with the seasons, become the moon, give birth to cocoons, and retell familiar histories into something unfamiliar and urgent, underlaid with a strong sense of magic. Yet his words also don’t shy away from the darkness beneath and crises coming. (more…)

— 1 day ago