Again, Harder - by Alice Stoehr (Paperback)

About the Book

"Cult writer Alice Stoehr's debut short fiction collection about the messy, intersecting lives of a community of Midwestern trans women. Stoehr's short stories investigate the inner lives, evolving relationships, and often violent marginalization of a community of trans women in a large Midwestern town"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Cult author Alice Stoehr's debut short fiction collection about the messy, intersecting lives of a community of Midwestern trans women.

Again, Harder gathers the uncompromising short fiction of Alice Stoehr, which investigates the inner lives, evolving relationships, and often violent marginalization of a community of trans women in a large Midwestern town.

In these stories, a commune of trans separatists seduces a suicidal writer. An obsessive TERF and the trans woman she's fixated on circle one another with building intensity. Polyamorous triads bloom and wilt, hookup app messages fly, friends sit for post-surgical care, and women fall to the toxic allure of Dorothy Lipko, the worst ex-girlfriend you have ever known.

Among this, there is regret, there is poverty, there is depression and sexual anxiety and despair; there is also fleeting, shared joy. Again, Harder is the sardonic heartbeat of a new generation of American trans women.

Review Quotes

Praise for Again, Harder:

"Again, Harder shines light on what happens in a society when trans women are systematically left with only one another to turn to in times of tension. . . . Through themes of sex, envy, power, and defeat, Stoehr illuminates just how real shit gets for trans women who have nothing and everything to lose." --Xtra Magazine

"Alice Stoehr has created an entire world. Trans life is rendered here with impeccable, sharp clarity, both diamond and shard of glass. These stories will leave you bruised, spent, and begging for more." --Katherine Packert Burke, author of Still Life

"Necessary, prodding, funny, sad, and (importantly!!!) horny dispatches from the crabs-in-a-bucket frontlines of modern transsexual life." --Mattie Lubchansky, author of Simplicity

"In Again, Harder, intimacies flash and fritz to form a deliciously tangled t4t circuitry. Alice Stoehr's acutely observed slices of Midwestern transfeminine life are dishy and dirty, thorny and sweet, charged with raw nerve and sure wisdom. This one will be trans canon in no time." --Megan Milks, author of Mega Milk

"Steeped in an ambient dissociative haze of weed smoke, flop sweat, and body glitter, here is a look at life on the margins of queer society at once unbearably tender and painfully desperate." --Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt

"Within the pages of Again, Harder, we glimpse what's behind every civil rights rallying cry and ironic meta-post: the Grand Guignol of sex, death, fear, and need that has driven so many of us to extremes. Alice Stoehr is a natural successor to Valerie Solanas and Paul B. Preciado, a writer of rare wit and frankness who can manage a truth about transness that supersedes ideology, antipathy, and even contemporary politics." --Rafael Frumkin, author of Confidence

"Again, Harder is a wall outlet my trans heart can't help but keep sticking forks in--each story here alights with its own jolting truth." --John Elizabeth Stintzi, author of Bad Houses

"Desperate, honest, and affecting, Again, Harder follows a circle of trans women whose lives overlap in messy and often humorous ways. Queer community can be a hassle, can be heartbreaking, and can save our lives. Alice Stoehr's wry tone does full justice to the complexities of these women's lives and marks her as a voice to watch out for." --Naomi Kanakia, author of The Default World

"These stories are beautiful, incisive, and finally all collected in one place. Every facet of transfeminine life is here, each waiting its turn to be held up to glimmer in the light." --June Martin, author of Love/Aggression

"Again, Harder is a book to match the queerness of life in the Midwest, a book that is harsh and unsettling and at times rapturously tender. What a necessity it is to have such books." --Lyn Corelle, coeditor of Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest!

About the Author

Alice Stoehr is a writer and bookseller living in Minneapolis. She has self-published four books of short fiction.