THE BRIDGE

As a young child, Keith Maillard asked his mother and grandmother, over and over again, “Am I a boy, or am I a girl?” He was never quite sure. Neither “boy” nor “girl” quite fit. But in America of the 40s and 50s, there were
absolutely no other options.

In this stunning memoir, Maillard weaves together an in tricate collage of childhood memories, exploring the contradictory and destructive forces at work that put his very life at risk. For young Keith, writing proved to be a
way to fight against what the world was telling him. In his scribbled stories, he bega n to spot the faintest glimmer that things could be different. And he kept writing, kept fighting, for years decades until he reached the other side of the bridge and could see his way to a new understanding of his own nonbinary identity.

The Bridge reveals the grave dangers of the gender binary, both for those who are outside it and for those who aren't. And it offers hope for a kinder future for all who dare to say “no” to the way that we do gender.


KEITH MAILLARD is a professor at the University of British Columbia's Creative Writing Program, of which he was previously Chair. His body of work includes a memoir, Fatherless, and fourteen novels, one of which, Motet, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Hazard Zones was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Prize and Gloria (published in the U.S. by Soho Press) won the Governor General's Award. The Clarinet Polka (St. Martin's Press) was awarded the Creative Arts Prize by the Polish American Historical Association. Maillard, whose most recent novel was Twin Studies (Freehand Books), grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he's been inducted into their Hall of Fame. He now lives in Vancouver.