Empower a Trans Voice in Christian Literature

Some of you have followed my transition journey since I first came out publicly in March of 2023. It has been a wild year and a half of learning and growing, changing and crying, and learning to feel truly and deeply for the first time in my life.

It's also been a time of unprecedented productivity for my own personal projects. Since transition, I have felt bubbling up in me again some of the parts of my life that had been dormant, especially writing. I have felt a craving to express, teach, explore, and communicate my experience to other people, with a special focus on what trans lives and stories -- or at least my story -- has to teach the Christian community.

An opportunity has arisen for me in response to some of that writing, and I am looking forward to participating with a publication initiative sponsored by Tehom Center Publishing, an imprint publishing feminist and queer authors. In addition to traditional, independent publishing at no cost to authors, TCP also offers coaching programs empowering authors in book writing, book marketing, and authorpreneurship. Learn more about TCP at their website: https://tehomcenter.org/

The opportunity that has arisen for me is two-fold: first, an opportunity to receive focused, dedicated author coaching with the support of Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber, in a project called "Ministry from the Margins" that seeks to highlight the voices of queer, feminist, and BIPOC clergy and clergy-adjacent folx. The coaching will include the details of developing a book project, the process of marketing and pitching a book, and access to a group and a community working in similar And second, at the conclusion of the coaching, the process includes a publishing contract with Tehom, and a timeline that would imagine book publication in 2025.

Although the costs for the program are signficant, the cost to me is somewhat smaller -- I'll need to raise $1,700 to help support my participation. I have already determined that I am willing to commit my own personal resources of time and effort to this project, but I wanted to provide an opportunity for the members of my beloved community, queer and non-queer alike, to help contribute to my ability to do this work without added financial burden or hardship.

This would be a tremendous opportunity for me, and a chance to develop a voice that I've been overjoyed to have found this past year. I want my project to focus on trans wisdom, and how the courage to transition is the courage to live into one of God's most important goals for God's people: that we feel, and feel deeply, the joys and sorrows and laughters of this astonishing, wonderful, extraordinary world. I want to talk about the place for anger, the source of joy, the need for grief, the space for wonder -- and how all of these emotions can be understood differently and anew by considering them through the spiritual lens of a trans woman's journey to authenticity and wholeness.

And, ultimately, I want this to be a love letter to my own trans siblings, near and far, especially to those yet to come into their wholeness. I want to be able to tell them that God wants them to feel their life deeply, too: that God has a hope for them, a future for them, and it's a future that involves the opportunity to take hold of and become the person they were made to be.

I would love to have you join with me in helping me develop this voice. If I've ever encouraged you, challenged you, enriched your life, or somehow brought you an idea or a thought or an insight you'd never considered the same way before, I would ask you to consider how you might be able to help me develop that voice in a bigger, more impactful way.

Thank you for being part of my community. Your support has been real, every step of my life. Even if you can't give today, know that this project is, in part, for you: a witness to the work you have done so far shaping me, molding me, developing me, and putting me on the path to contribute something meaningful to a world that needs all the help it can get.

Some samples of my recent writing are all available through my Writer Page at the Christian Citizen:

https://christiancitizen.us/author/madisonmcclendon/