Dick’s Lending Library is a library of English and French-language texts written by trans, non-binary, Two Spirit, and gender non-conforming authors, with a small selection of other relevant titles. Our collection showcases the varied and ever-new literary genres and poetic modes in which trans, non-binary Two Spirit, and gender non-conforming authors speak, and our programming plans include collaboratively crafted workshops, reading series, public talks, pops-ups, and ephemeral reading rooms.
Though our collections and programming, Dick’s aims to build a local resource for trans, non-binary, Two Spirit, and gender non-conforming readers, writers, artists, scholars, curators, and educators. We strive to foster a space for collaborative inquiry into the ways that writing registers histories of thinking and feeling, and the political and ethical possibilities that practices of reading might forge. Dick’s wagers that a collection of texts by trans, non-binary, Two Spirit, and gender non-conforming authors bears the potential both to foreground the material conditions that shape variously gendered experiences and to animate solidarities, collectives, and affinities that do not rest on any identitarian ground.
A note on terminology:
Dick’s frames the authors in our collection with the terms “trans, non-binary, Two-Spirit, and gender non-conforming” with the understanding that no single term can accommodate the multiple histories and systems of power that shape how we each relate to bodies and pleasures. The categories of trans, non-binary, Two-Spirit, and gender non-conforming are neither mutually exclusive, nor fixed in their meanings; rather, they each carry histories of both meaning and erasure and offer distinct entry points into historically and culturally specific experiences. Dick’s takes the definitions of each of these terms as open questions, to which our growing library and ongoing programming aim to propose an unfinished collection of possible answers.