Worthy of the Event: An Essay by Vivian Blaxell

A trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence

Move over Michel de Montaigne, there's a new girl in town

ABA Indie Next Pick - Vulture Best Book of 2025 So Far - Publishers Weekly starred review - San Francisco Chronicle Women's History Month Book Pick - Allstora Queer History 101 Book Club Pick - Vol. 1 Brooklyn April 2025 Book of the Month

Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s, Vivian Blaxell takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai'i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind.

In seven devastatingly intelligent parts, her essay covers a vast range in time and space -- from the arson of a Japanese temple to a transformative encounter with a coral reef, from Nietzsche and Hegel to Indigenous metaphysics, from a perplexing relationship with a beautiful man to the unknowable minds of animals. Fleshy and philosophical, searching and exalted, utterly distinctive and assured, Worthy of the Event belatedly establishes Vivian Blaxell as one of the major writers of her generation.

"Astonishing ... confident, nimble ... teeming with wonder and wicked humor ... readers craving a break from the mundane will be grateful Blaxell has shared these stunning explorations." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Incredible ... Blaxell unspools a devastating meditation on life ... From beginning to end, Worthy of the Event is funny as hell, writing as transcendent as it is human. I laughed out loud. I cried at the end." --The Rumpus

"Sharp and amusingly tart ... contain[s] a whole library of experience." --Torrey Peters, The Guardian

"A moving and brilliant exploration of trans life since the '60s ... electrified, searching ... Worthy of the Event reads like a conversation with one of your smartest, most self-aware friends. What a pleasure to discover the world through Blaxell's eyes." -Isle McElroy, Vulture

"It takes a lot to impress a jaded old soul like me. But reading Vivian Blaxell I think: Wow! Worthy of the Event tracks the multi-dimensionality of consciousness as the author moves through gendered spheres of pleasure, strife, disappointment, hilarity. Always at the core of her personal is an empathetic participation in the plights of all species. Blaxell's blunt, elegant sentences are thoroughly modern, yet they exude a depth that speaks to previous centuries. I see her as a sort of 21st century Proust committed to TMI. "My vagina is not a good judge of character." This is what writing should look like. This is what writing should do."--Dodie Bellamy, author of Bee Reaved

Paperback / 296 pages