Worthy of the Event
An Essay
A trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence
Move over Michel de Montaigne, there's a new girl in town
Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s, Vivian Blaxell takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai’i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind. In seven devastatingly intelligent parts, her essay covers a vast range in time and space — from the arson of a Japanese temple to a transformative encounter with a coral reef, from Nietzsche and Hegel to Indigenous metaphysics, from a perplexing relationship with a beautiful man to the unknowable minds of animals. Fleshy and philosophical, searching and exalted, utterly distinctive and assured, Worthy of the Event belatedly establishes Vivian Blaxell as one of the major writers of her generation.
Vivian Blaxell grew up in rural Australia and co-founded Tiresias House, Australia’s first shelter and resource centre for and by trans people. Her essay "Nuclear Cats" was shortlisted for the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
