Casey Plett

Casey Plett (born June 20, 1987) is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing. Plett also co-founded LittlePuss Press with Cat Fitzpatrick.

Personal life Plett was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up in a Mennonite family in Morden, Manitoba. She attended high school in Eugene, Oregon, and later moved to Portland for college and New York for graduate school. Plett currently teaches at Ohio University.

Writing career Plett previously wrote a regular column about her gender transition for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She has also written about her transition for Defectors series, Histories of Transition. She is a book reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press

Plett has cited Imogen Binnie, Elena Rose, and Julia Serano as some of her influences.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere Plett met Cat Fitzpatrick at a writer's conference in the early 2010s: later, Fitzpatrick asked Plett to co-edit a trans-authored speculative fiction anthology with her. The anthology was likely the first speculative fiction collection written entirely by trans authors, and it won the 2018 Barbara Gittings Literature Award, a Stonewall Book Award.

A Dream of a Woman In 2021, Plett published A Dream of a Woman, another short story collection with eight short stories about trans women. Elanor Broker, reviewing for Portland Mercury, praised it as the "leading edge of trans storytelling" and appreciated its stories set in Oregon and Portland, saying it elevated neglected experiences using deep stories anchored in local settings. Drew Burnett Gregory, reviewing for Autostraddle, says it is a trans love and forgiveness story, whose parts reveal deep nuances in that experience: with "immersive prose, they sting and salve, then sting again".

A Dream of a Woman was longlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize. Plett then served on the Giller Prize jury in 2022.

On Community Plett published On Community in 2023. It is a short work compiling her thoughts and experiences about community, insisting on the neutrality of community and exploring various questions and definitions in a playful and invitational tone. Laura Sackton, reviewing for Book Riot, praised the book's insights, funny and informal tone, and ability to start a conversation about the subject: "Plett opens the doors to so many rich conversations about what community—in all its iterations—can and cannot do".

LittlePuss Press

Plett and Cat Fitzpatrick founded LittlePuss Press in 2020. Their aim was to create a feminist press to publish authors who wouldn't be published elsewhere, especially supporting trans literature. Their first publication was a reprint of Meanwhile, Elsewhere, the anthology that both women had previously written for Topside Press, which had since disbanded.

Awards Work Awards ResultRef.A Safe Girl to LoveLambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Dayne Oglivie Prize Meanwhile, ElsewhereStonewall Book Award: Barbara Gittings Literature Award Little FishAmazon.ca First Novel Award Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction A Dream of a WomanGiller Prize Leslie Feinberg Award

Selected works Works by Plett include the following: