NOTE: This book’s publication date is November 4, 2025 and it will be shipped then—special pre-orders have unfortunately closed!
In 1993, Mirha Soleil-Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay, fed up with a gay scene that rejected trans people and a trans scene that saw no alternative to going "stealth," began to publish the zine Gendertrash From Hell. Over four issues, they interviewed sex workers and prisoners; they printed collages, soap operas and polemics; they ran regular sections with titles like “Trannies Speak Out” and “Hooker of the Month”. They redefined transsexual culture forever, and their explosive ideas resonate deeply today.
Remastered from the original layouts, this foundational work is now available in book form for the first time, including previously-unseen drafts from the unfinished fifth issue and essays by Trish Salah and Leah Tigers. Irreverent, furious, reckless, sexy, hilarious and incisive, Gendertrash from Hell is here to set all your presuppositions on fire.
PRAISE FOR GENDERTRASH FROM HELL
“There is an alternate history of what we now call trans studies, trans culture, trans literature, one that is not USian and monolingual in its origin stories and normative framework, one that begins rooted in sex worker, racialized, Indigenous and street active transsexual and transgender peoples communities, one that is not “queer paradigmed” in its frame, or oriented towards respectability or institutional legitimation.”
—Trish Salah, Lambda Award-winning author of Wanting in Arabic and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1
“A breath-taking archive of our community and our struggle for connection, acceptance and liberation. Within these pages I can recollect the path of my own forming, reflections and refractions of the zines and message boards and chatrooms of my past, laid out like stepping stones to my current self. An absolute vital work for a precipitous time!”
—Lilly Wachowski, co-director of The Matrix
“Riotous...fascinating...The most powerful aspect of this compendium is witnessing the zine grow its readership and outreach via its expanding personals section, letters to the editor, and cross-advertising from other trans publications. It's a remarkable and inspiring record of community-building.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Beautiful. Powerful. Dangerous. Cold. It would be important to put Gendertrash back into print solely as a historical document - evidence that trans people having been uncompromising about the things that matter for a lot longer than you might have heard. But Gendertrash is a lot more than that. Everything here is still relevant, vital, even crucial. Also? What a potent reminder to make a zine. You. Today. Interview your friends. Make a zine. What a gift.”
— Imogen Binnie, author of Nevada
“Thank the Goddexx for Gendertrash and its far-reaching vision, uncompromised ethos, its lust for sharing and also for lust, its wildness and its crucial, lived knowledge. A perfect, angry, art community in a zine; a deeply necessary collection, then and now and always.”
—Michelle Tea, Lambda Award-winning author of Valencia and Black Wave
“You’re doing a print edition of Gendertrash from Hell?! I’ve been hoping for something like this for years!”
—Alice Stoehr, author of Sissy Bitches, bookseller at The Irreverent Bookworm (Minneapolis, MN)
“Gender's back in town, baby!”
—Lou Barcott, Myopic Books (Chicago, IL)
“Wait, are you serious? Oh dude, this is so big. The era of passing around that one Xanthra Phillippa poem out of context on Insta stories is over. The girls are going to learn … genetics on notice!”
—Joyce Laurie, Editor of Picnic magazine
“It’s a dream come true to be able to hold Gendertrash, after years with the PDF. What a gift to trans life. If theory mutilates and surgery liberates, Gendertrash has always been a scalpel.”
—Saul Freedman-Lawson, Another Story Bookshop (Toronto, ON)
“Who knew, back in the early 1990s, that trans people could love one another like this?”
—Leah Tigers, historian, trickymothernature.com
PRODUCT DETAILS
Publication Date: November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964322-08-7
Page Count: 344
Dimensions: 7.7” x 9.35”
NOTE: This book’s publication date is November 4, 2025 and it will be shipped then—special pre-orders have unfortunately closed!
In 1993, Mirha Soleil-Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay, fed up with a gay scene that rejected trans people and a trans scene that saw no alternative to going "stealth," began to publish the zine Gendertrash From Hell. Over four issues, they interviewed sex workers and prisoners; they printed collages, soap operas and polemics; they ran regular sections with titles like “Trannies Speak Out” and “Hooker of the Month”. They redefined transsexual culture forever, and their explosive ideas resonate deeply today.
Remastered from the original layouts, this foundational work is now available in book form for the first time, including previously-unseen drafts from the unfinished fifth issue and essays by Trish Salah and Leah Tigers. Irreverent, furious, reckless, sexy, hilarious and incisive, Gendertrash from Hell is here to set all your presuppositions on fire.
PRAISE FOR GENDERTRASH FROM HELL
“There is an alternate history of what we now call trans studies, trans culture, trans literature, one that is not USian and monolingual in its origin stories and normative framework, one that begins rooted in sex worker, racialized, Indigenous and street active transsexual and transgender peoples communities, one that is not “queer paradigmed” in its frame, or oriented towards respectability or institutional legitimation.”
—Trish Salah, Lambda Award-winning author of Wanting in Arabic and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1
“A breath-taking archive of our community and our struggle for connection, acceptance and liberation. Within these pages I can recollect the path of my own forming, reflections and refractions of the zines and message boards and chatrooms of my past, laid out like stepping stones to my current self. An absolute vital work for a precipitous time!”
—Lilly Wachowski, co-director of The Matrix
“Riotous...fascinating...The most powerful aspect of this compendium is witnessing the zine grow its readership and outreach via its expanding personals section, letters to the editor, and cross-advertising from other trans publications. It's a remarkable and inspiring record of community-building.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Beautiful. Powerful. Dangerous. Cold. It would be important to put Gendertrash back into print solely as a historical document - evidence that trans people having been uncompromising about the things that matter for a lot longer than you might have heard. But Gendertrash is a lot more than that. Everything here is still relevant, vital, even crucial. Also? What a potent reminder to make a zine. You. Today. Interview your friends. Make a zine. What a gift.”
— Imogen Binnie, author of Nevada
“Thank the Goddexx for Gendertrash and its far-reaching vision, uncompromised ethos, its lust for sharing and also for lust, its wildness and its crucial, lived knowledge. A perfect, angry, art community in a zine; a deeply necessary collection, then and now and always.”
—Michelle Tea, Lambda Award-winning author of Valencia and Black Wave
“You’re doing a print edition of Gendertrash from Hell?! I’ve been hoping for something like this for years!”
—Alice Stoehr, author of Sissy Bitches, bookseller at The Irreverent Bookworm (Minneapolis, MN)
“Gender's back in town, baby!”
—Lou Barcott, Myopic Books (Chicago, IL)
“Wait, are you serious? Oh dude, this is so big. The era of passing around that one Xanthra Phillippa poem out of context on Insta stories is over. The girls are going to learn … genetics on notice!”
—Joyce Laurie, Editor of Picnic magazine
“It’s a dream come true to be able to hold Gendertrash, after years with the PDF. What a gift to trans life. If theory mutilates and surgery liberates, Gendertrash has always been a scalpel.”
—Saul Freedman-Lawson, Another Story Bookshop (Toronto, ON)
“Who knew, back in the early 1990s, that trans people could love one another like this?”
—Leah Tigers, historian, trickymothernature.com
PRODUCT DETAILS
Publication Date: November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964322-08-7
Page Count: 344
Dimensions: 7.7” x 9.35”
