Local Woman Launch at Powell’s Books

Jzl Jmz launches Local Woman with Callum Angus, author of A Natural History of Transition.

Enter: Local Woman, an archetypal figure, fresh from the forest into the streets of Portland, Oregon. She is a Black trans woman, seeking survival and satisfaction, giving seduction, disenfranchisement, and the contradictions of femme womanhood a face, body, and soul. In sensual, evocative lyrics, Jzl Jmz documents Local Woman’s movement through natural disaster, anti-fascist protest, romantic engagements, and an expanding sense of personal autonomy. Local Woman is a pulpy, mytho-poetic dispatch from an “anarchist jurisdiction” that explores the liberatory possibilities of community and womanhood.

Jzl Jmz (FKA jayy dodd) aka [Lady Tournament] has been featured in the LA Times, Poetry Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Ms. Magazine, PEN America, and more. She’s the author of Mannish Tongues and the Poetry Center Book Prize-winner, The Black Condition ft. Narcissus. She curated Beyond Special Issue (a collective critique on tokenism in (Trans*) poetry) and THEE SPACE Poetry Prize with Shade Literary Arts. She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow, a Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and an Artist-in-Residence at Ori Gallery. She’s an occasional rapper & founder of Tournament Haus Mutual Aid Fund.

Callum Angus is a writer, editor, and the publisher of smoke and mold, a literary journal invested in the narrative possibilities trans lives bring to our changing nature-culture. His first story collection, A Natural History of Transition, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and an Oregon Book Award. His work has appeared in many publications, and he writes the newsletter Sex Weather Climate Death, which includes monthly(ish) meditations on a body and planet in transition. Based in Portland, he teaches independent workshops online and through Corporeal Writing.