Archive • Across and Beyond • Buttondown

A new year & a new cartoon memoir

January 14, 2022

Hello and Happy New Year! I hope you are well during these challenging times. I feel like every day I’m either replying to someone that “I’m not leaving the...

How much is enough? 🤨

October 5, 2021

How often do you want to hear from me? I'd love to get your feedback via my nifty, one-question survey. Thank you in advance for your time. Until next time, Jay

The Sound(s) of Injustice

September 27, 2021

Rare is the novel where taste, touch, smell or sound create the prominent sensory descriptions. We rely on our eyes as humans. We want writers to use visual...

Do you want to find out more about author marketing?🧐

September 14, 2021

Hello, If you're a writer and/or creative who wants to learn more about marketing; if you find most articles about marketing for creative spirits rather...

The one weird trick I learned from IKEA 😂

Tears of joy. That’s what dripped from my eyes one late Saturday afternoon about four years ago. Ms. H and I had deliberated for weeks about how to better...

The time I split my pants 😬

The whole thing started with Fowling, or football bowling for the uninitiated. Maybe it was a birthday party or some commemorative event. I can’t remember. I...

I do this 'too much' probably 'too often' 😉

The governor of Mississippi has his pen at the ready to legislate against transgirls and women. (I'm not giving him any more play. Google it up, if you want...

The worst piece of technology ever 🤬

The worst piece of technology ever? My brain. I forget. I delay. I evade. I refuse. Most days I simply can't remember. Anything. At. All. Organizing and...

The time I played Dance Dance Revolution and hit my head on the ceiling 😹

On a dark night during a cold, Michigan winter, Ms. H and I spent time with our nieces and nephew down in the basement watching now-forgotten kid videos and...

Oh. Emm. Gee. I'm Old. 🙀

About two weeks I received a rejection email from a reputable journal. I had submitted an essay I’d been working on for years about internalized fears I’d...

Across and Beyond 011: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

October 2, 2020

Picture this with me: you’ve been doing the important work as an anti-racist activist, reading all the right books, listening to the right podcasts, maybe...

Across and Beyond 010: Transsexuality as an Aesthetic Project

August 28, 2019

I’ve been doing a serious writing folder clean up/review. Over the last twenty years I’ve written in text files, Microsoft Word and Word Perfect. My Mac...

Across and Beyond 009: It's Complicated

No. 1 The realization that I described my fears and sufferings as pitiful attempts to get dates gobsmacked me. Jay Sennett No. 2 I'm not a woman dressing as...

Across and Beyond 008: Miscellany

No • 1 My packing dildo fell out of my pants. Do I pick it up, look at it, display mock disgust and walk away like I don’t even see it? And if I leave it,...

Across and Beyond 007: Technicians of Ecstasy

[Sunday Sketches by Christoph Niemann] Christoph Niemann is a masterly technician of ecstasy (Mark Levy’s term). His visual playfulness forces me to think...

Across and Beyond 006: Those Deserving of the Truth

From Milkman, by Anna Burns, in which middle sister resists the efforts of her district gossips to capitulate to their unfounded and untrue rumoring about...

Across and Beyond 005: Frankenstein's Monster

A short newsletter this week. Ms. H and I have been celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary and so I’ve been pleasantly focused this week on enjoying this...

Across and Beyond 004: We are More Than I

I’ve written a lot of memoirist words about being a transsexual over the last two decades. Starting in the mid-1990s I wrote “Interstitial Living,” a bi-...

Across and Beyond 003: Renewal

On This Day of Reawakening to all my peep-le “No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.” - Proverb (but only in the Northern Hemisphere!) And...

Across and Beyond 002: Transsexual Cartography

On Metaphors when one just won’t do As a transsexual I live with a sad, dry reality: I get one metaphor to describe my choices and experiences. I was born in...

Across and Beyond 001: In the Beginning

Welcome to Across and Beyond *trans:across:beyond Buttondown now fulfills my email newsletter needs. Mailchimp got to be too much. I've been in a minimalist...