I guess my way of avoiding the trap – although can you really? Who knows – is that i n this book I am interrogating myself, and I would be doing that anyway, whether or not there was a culture war happening . I still would be asking these questions even if no one else was around. Alabanza’s book has a reflective quality that touches the heart and engages the mind,” said judge Anthony Vahni Capildeo. “It feels like being invited into someone’s interiority.” Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation – or, failing that,wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply) A vivid reminder that, to be neither, within a binary world, is to sacrifice both state and sometimes community protection." Yes, and the relevance of which we have yet to come to grips with. I daresay this is a long-term trend. Victorian children were put to work in all sorts of iniquitous circumstances. My own mother started work in a cotton mill at the age of 14. Teenagers weren’t ‘invented’ till after WW2.

One may sympathise with this dilemma while wondering whether a measure of pragmatism might not be in everyone’s interests. After all, it’s hard to see how we can accommodate those who experience every form of social meaning as violent impingement, short of abolishing all social meaning. And a culture stripped of both social meanings and the ability to think is no culture at all. Voice of the Fish enacts the least worst version of this perspective: radical subjectivism as an art form. By contrast, None of the Above is probably a more accurate reflection of what a politics of radical ambiguity means in practice, among those less literate than Horn: woolly thinking and self-absorption. Travis Alabanza writes about gender and its possibilities with such generosity and ease even the most provocative suggestions start to seem obvious, despite their challenges to society at large. This anti-memoir, which is at times both profound and funny, will make anyone question the stories we tell about ourselves, how we tell them and even who the telling is for -- SHON FAYE, author of THE TRANSGENDER ISSUEunequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion Both writers express the same longing to inhabit the world in a more fluid, protean and self-created way. Water, swimming, tides, sea-life and blurring physically at the edges are recurring themes in Voice of the Fish, and Alabanza employs a similar aquatic metaphor: “A body of water, potential to do so much, yet eventually bottled.” The book, Jawando said, was “so hard to write”. “For a long time, I thought it was really terrible,” she said. “I lost a lot of confidence with this book.” She said she was “really honoured” to win the prize. All upcoming public events are going ahead as planned and you can find more information on our events blog

Fellow judge Irfan Master said the book stood out for its “craft, courage and connection”, while Yaba Badoe, also judging, said “every teenager” should read the book. Travis Alabanza writes about gender and its possibilities with such generosity and ease even the most provocative suggestions start to seem obvious, despite their challenges to society at large. This anti-memoir, which is at times both profound and funny, will make anyone question the stories we tell about ourselves, how we tell them and even who the telling is for’ When I was 16 and met the first person who said ‘I’m not male or female’, that was mind-blowing. It felt so punk” – Travis AlabanzaI needed to write this book because I want to tell my own narrative rather than let everyone fill in the blanks,” Alabanza said. “And I think when an award like this happens for trans people, it just continues to show that there are more people wanting to celebrate us than not.” Everything has to revolve around them, their likes and their dislikes, which is sad, although it does mean we always have something to talk about … them. JG: One theme that crops up throughout the book is the value in trying to have a conception of your identity which is separate from transphobia. Why was that important for you to interrogate?

Surely this was how I knew? If I were telling this story at a dinner party, in response to another person asking me the question yet again, I would receive full marks for this one. There are the clear signifiers that link this story to the mainstream perception of trans identity, particularly those of us assigned male at birth: the high-heeled shoe and the performative nature of the song effortlessly blends with the public imagination of how all transfeminine people discover our gender. Blended with the quirkiness of a hunky German lodger, this story, when told right, often results in a sea of smiles, unthreatened nods and a calmness washing over the room. A calmness that is specific to liberal cisgender people feeling comfortable again because they have you all figured out. None of the Above explores the nuance of self-understanding in an honest, hilarious, and heartfelt way. It is a stunning intersectional interrogation of gender that reads like a conversation with a friend." —Blair Imani, author of Read This to Get Smarter: About Race, Class, Gender, Disability & MoreBrilliant . . . This is a book which everyone can learn from, whether you’re a cis person who hasn’t yet interrogated how your options are shut down or any flavour of trans person pushed towards trying to be less visible but maybe less of yourself for having the options stolen away’ None of the Above by Travis Alabanza is a thoughtful, stunningly crafted meditation on identity, survival, resilience and defiance that inhabits the personal but also transcends it to speak to universal ethical, moral and human concerns,” she continued. “When Our Worlds Collided is compelling young adult novel that is urgent, necessary and intensely compassionate.” In my friend’s directness, I gain a clarity about experiences that were dealt me with greater sleight of hand. My friend’s “But I mean proper trans” in the middle of a south London pub becomes the moment a hairstylist on a job told me, unprompted, that my wig “would suit my face more if I shaved”. Now when I hear “But I mean proper trans”, I think of the countless men who have told me, unprompted, that if I “made more effort to be convincing” then they would sleep with me. I decide instead that today I will try to say what I think, even if I have not fully figured it out In None of the Above, Travis Alabanza explores the concept of gender and their place in a world that rigidly and aggressively enforces the gender binary. Alabanza shares seven phrases that have been directed at them throughout their life—some deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or violent, some celebratory. These phrases act as a lens through which they explore attitudes and misconceptions about gender, illuminating broader issues within a culture that insists on gender as a fixed identity. None of the Above explicates how these rigid ideas of gender are enforced by people—on others, but also on themselves. When someone refers to me as a “he” in passing I have to remind myself they could possibly be talking about me’