Worthy of the Event: An Essay

A trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence

Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction - Longlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal

Move over Michel de Montaigne, there's a new girl in town

ABA Indie Next Pick - Vulture Best Book of 2025 - Publishers Weekly starred review - San Francisco Chronicle Women's History Month Book Pick - Allstora Queer History 101 Book Club Pick - Vol. 1 Brooklyn April 2025 Book of the Month - A Lit Hub Notable Small Press Book of 2025 - An Artforum Best Book of 2025

Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s, Vivian Blaxell takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai'i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind. In seven devastatingly intelligent parts, her essay covers a vast range in time and space -- from the arson of a Japanese temple to a transformative encounter with a coral reef, from Nietzsche and Hegel to Indigenous metaphysics, from a perplexing relationship with a beautiful man to the unknowable minds of animals. Fleshy and philosophical, searching and exalted, utterly distinctive and assured, Worthy of the Event belatedly establishes Vivian Blaxell as one of the major writers of her generation.