my first cover story!

Some stuff I've been up to, with more to come soon.

I have been trying to profile Nikki Hiltz for two years. In the summer of 2021, when they were competing in the Olympic trials to qualify for the Tokyo Games (in what ended up being a disastrous showing for them) I pitched several outlets about the athlete who could be the first openly non-binary person to run track at the Olympics. As usual, the bar for coverage was impossibly high. Pitch us again if they make the Olympics, was the reply from everyone I pitched.

So I was thrilled last November when Runner's World popped into my inbox with a story commission. Would I like to profile Hiltz? The answer was a resounding yes.

In December I traveled to Flagstaff, Arizona to spend time with Nikki Hiltz, the (now) first openly non-binary U.S. national track and field champion. Nikki is a delight and if you don't follow them on social media (particularly TikTok), I suggest you get on that now. They are sociable and funny and someone I could imagine myself being friends with in a different world.

The result of that trip is the current cover story of Runner's World magazine, my very first cover. The subtle trans flag along the side of the magazine made me tear up.

As is usual, a lot of fun writing got lost in the editorial process. I met Nikki the night after the full moon in Gemini during Sagittarius season and in my original drafts of this story, astrology played a much bigger role in the narrative (is it really a queer story if you don't make astrology references?). Here's a little peek.

“Did you see the moon last night?” they ask me as a greeting. It’s the morning after the full moon in Gemini during Sagittarius season. I did, in awe of how it lit up the desert sky, like someone had turned on a lamp in the black expanse. Hiltz left out a glass of water under the night sky to charge under the moon. They tell me that their moon and rising sign are Gemini, a sign known for its quick-thinking and its duality. (Some characterize this as being two-faced, but I like to think of as adaptive and chameleon-like.) This Gemini full moon asked us to pay attention to the narratives we tell, both to and about ourselves, according to tarot writer Meg Jones Wall, which felt like a fitting time for Hiltz to sit down and share their story with me, a Sagittarius...

This Gemini duality is apparent in other aspects of their life, as well. Hiltz’s very existence requires them to hold many things at once, all the time. They are an athlete and an advocate; they exist both within and outside of the gender binary; they are a self-identified king racing in the women’s division. Imagine the joy, then, as they get to cross the finish line, the first person doing it in a body like theirs. They can exist simply as a champion—nothing more, nothing less. In that moment, they are whole.

I also recently had the privilege of writing the lead story for a (imo) game-changing package for SELF magazine. The package, called "Let Them Play" Is entirely about why trans kids should not be excluded from sports and was entirely queer- and trans-written and conceived.

SELF talked to five young people whose stories are noteworthy not only because they offer a counter narrative to the fearmongering and misinformation, but also because they show that trans kids who play sports are simply kids who play sports. The teens who spoke to us shared how they fell in love with the game—with the thrill of competition, the camaraderie, the challenge of learning new skills, or any of the other many benefits playing sports provides.

While most of these stories are positive, we would have been remiss to ignore the reality that many trans youth are currently facing in this country—one of pushback, roadblocks, and outright participation bans. The stories we feature here reflect the full spectrum of experiences trans kids are having on the playing field, focusing on the good while acknowledging the ugly.

I also have an op-ed at The Nation about what international chess banning trans women reveals about the entire push to exclude them from all sports.

“FIDE’s new policy—and its pathetic attempts to defend that policy— underscores two things about the trans-exclusionary wave that is sweeping all levels of sport. The first is that these rules are based not on science but on misogyny… The second thing that the FIDE fiasco reveals is that these policies were never actually about fairness in competition, but about erasing trans people’s ability to participate in public life.”