ABOUT THIS BOOK

A nonfiction work examining a confluence of bodily and worldwide transition

Stream is an exploration of the large- and small-scale changes taking place in a single body and on our planet as a whole. Using a stream as a biological, technological, and psychological metaphor, Angus layers lyric essay, journal entries, and the detritus of a life spent writing about the climate within and without to consider how we remain fluid in a time of constant change. Each section of Stream flows into the next, weaving through thaws, floods, cataracts, and eddies while asking how a melting of rigid categories, from seasons to gender, might help us approach a changing world anew. From winery workers dying in the fields to endangered desert tortoises unable to outrun the flames, Stream is an outpouring of climatological grief toward those who perpetuate inaction, an elegy for those we’ve lost to the heat, and a tribute to the tributaries that help us see the world from other perspectives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

CALLUM ANGUS is a writer, teacher, and publisher living in Portland, Oregon. His first book of stories, A Natural History of Transition, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and the Oregon Book Award. His short stories have been published in Joyland, Nat. Brut, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. His critical and creative nonfiction has appeared in Orion, Catapult, Literary Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Warscapes, Them, and the anthology Kink and Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves. In 2019 he started the literary journal smoke and mold, which publishes nature writing, broadly defined, by trans and Two-Spirit writers.

REVIEWS

“Deeply engrossing and unquestionably beautiful, Stream is a much-needed addition to queer/trans literature.” — Zoë Bossiere, author of Cactus Country

“Stream is a book about presence—what we feel, what we make, what we choose, what we hold, how we hold on. By merging gender transition and climate change, ecstasy and boredom, mourning and witness, Callum Angus creates a book of capacious mystery and dynamic clarity where ‘the pages are the water,’ so we can flow. Elegantly crafted from a series of observational texts that speak to one another, between one another, between us, here the declarative meets the embodied meets the inquisitive. At once searing and savoring, this is a book that teaches us how to stay present in a world that is always ending.” —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Social Distancing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Act I: Thaw
Act II: Flood
Act III: Cataract
Act IV: Stream

Acknowledgments