Returning to Nevada

Imogen Binnie’s first novel became a staple of trans literature. Nine years and one new reissue later, how much has changed in the culture?

- HARRON WALKER

NEVADA OPENS in New York sometime immediately post–Great Recession. It follows Maria Griffiths, a conflict averse, often inebriated trans woman who sucks at communicating in every aspect of her life except when she’s blogging. After her girlfriend dumps her and she loses her job and apartment, Maria does what any of us would do: She steals her ex’s car, snags a bunch of heroin, and road-trips out West—where she meets a small-town Nevada Walmart clerk named James H. He’s intrigued by Maria’s rock-star vibe; she becomes convinced that he’s actually a trans woman in desperate need of saving from his dissociative male façade. “I’m gonna go talk to that girl and tell her that she’s a girl,” Maria decides shortly after they cross paths. “We’ll talk, and she’ll cry, and I’ll set her up a Livejournal so she can sort through all her feelings and then I’ll leave and totally learn something about myself too.” Maria is not wrong to assume this about James, exactly— the duck is quacking and walking—but you can’t just tell someone she’s trans before she comes to that conclusion herself or she’ll steal your drugs and ditch you in a casino.

Nevada, one of the first releases from the now-defunct trans-run and trans-lit focused Topside Press, barely caused a blip on the broader literary world’s radar when it was released in 2013. Its author, Imogen Binnie, never intended to write a novel that would cause more than that. She imagined for the book, which she wrote over four years, an audience like herself: trans women who craved fiction about trans women that didn’t make them regret learning how to read. Fans embraced