Morgan Thomas in Conversation with Taylor Brorby

Join us for a virtual conversation between Morgan Thomas, author of the rave-reviewed short story collection Manywhere, and Taylor Brorby, professor of environmental studies at Wofford College and author of the forthcoming memoir Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land. This event is free and open to all; register at the link below!

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Morgan Thomas's Manywhere features lush and uncompromising stories about characters crossing geographical borders and gender binaries.

These breathlessly imaginative stories are all the more remarkable for the elegant, organic ways in which the author unhooks language from its entrenched assumptions about men and women. - Claire Oshetsky, New York Times Shortlist

The nine stories in Morgan Thomas’s shimmering debut collection witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, whatever the cost. As Thomas’s subjects trace deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery.

A trans woman finds her independence with the purchase of a pregnancy bump; a young Virginian flees their relationship, choosing instead to immerse themself in the life of an intersex person from Colonial-era Jamestown. A writer tries to evade the murky and violent legacy of an ancestor who supposedly disappeared into a midwifery bag, and in the uncanny title story, a young trans person brings home a replacement daughter for their elderly father.

Winding between reinvention and remembrance, transition and transcendence, these origin stories resound across centuries. With warm, meticulous emotional intelligence, Morgan Thomas uncovers how the stories we borrow to understand ourselves in turn shape the people we become. Ushering in a new form of queer mythmaking, Manywhere introduces a storyteller of uncommon range and talent. 

[A] visionary and keenly observed debut. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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About the Author

Morgan Thomas is a writer from the Gulf Coast. Their work has appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. They’ve received support from the Bread Loaf Work-Study Program and the Fulbright Foundation. They are currently a Southern Studies Fellow in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

About the Conversation Partner

Taylor Brorby is the author of Crude: Poems, Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience, and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, the MacDowell Colony, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Mesa Refuge, Blue Mountain Center, and the North Dakota Humanities Council. Taylor’s work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Taylor currently teaches environmental studies at Wofford College. His next book, Boys and Oil, will be published this year.