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Announcing Willy's new book!

Gender Splendor: 50 Creative Sparks to Celebrate Yourself at All Ages and Stages

Available on Amazon

Gender Splendor: 50 Creative Sparks to Celebrate Yourself at All Ages and Stages is a creative workbook that offers metaphoric inspiration for trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people and their allies. Award-winning author, public health consultant, and trans elder Willy Chang Wilkinson invites the community to use the transformative power of self-expression to name their truths, take back their power, and remind themselves of their brilliance and resilience. People of all ages are invited to reimagine their birth announcement, envision their body as dream home, and embrace nature’s expansiveness and the splendor of their gender.

 

One can write in this book or the Gender Splendor Journal, record a video, or use another art form. This life-affirming resource provides liberatory prompts to nurture self-healing and identify many reasons to celebrate trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive joy. 

 

The Gender Splendor Journal has 100 blank pages, and is sprinkled with encouraging and affirming messages. It is the perfect companion to Gender Splendor: 50 Creative Sparks to Celebrate Yourself at All Ages and Stages. View on Amazon.

Gender Splendor offers us all a profound opportunity for reflection and self-actualization at a time when trans people face large, existential threats. Amidst all that, Wilkinson empowers us with tools to turn inward, heal, and grow.” 

--Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality

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Welcome to the official website of Willy Wilkinson

and the home of LGBTQ ACCESS: 

Advancing Cultural Competency and Equity in Services and Systems.

                         Willy's book Born on the Edge of Race                              and Gender: A Voice for Cultural                                      Competency won the Lamdba Literary                          Award in transgender non-fiction!

"Born on the Edge of Race and Gender is an extraordinary work by one of the most fearless and dynamic voices of our time—a multi-layered masterpiece that may well be the most accessible, lively, and honest account yet of life as a transgender man…Prepare to be dazzled, shaken, and amazed...Far more than just a memoir, this book is also a treasure trove of intersectional research, wisdom, and practical knowledge, distilled by one of the nation’s foremost experts on public health and other issues affecting transgender people, and one of the most experienced, hands-on cultural competency trainers in our movement.

 

--Shannon Price Minter, Esq.                                                          

Co-editor, Transgender Rights

Legal Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights

President Obama’s Commission on White House Fellowships 

Read what people are saying about Born on the Edge of Race and Gender

 

 

"On so many levels, you have been right at the corner of Inter and Sectionality all your life."  

--Michelle Brown, interviewing Willy on

Can We Talk 4 Real.            Listen here 

                                    

35 years of experience. Interactive, informative, solutions-oriented             

Informative, thought-provoking, moving, and engaging

 

 

Technical assistance with forms, policies, systems, and procedures; qualitative research, curriculum development

Develop systems, train staff, provide resource materials, conduct a Train the Trainer process

Workshops

Invite Willy to conduct writing workshops with your group of any age!

“Kudos to Willy Chang Wilkinson for bringing us gender creativity at its best. Reminding every trans, nonbinary and gender expansive person that ‘your existence has value and meaning,’ Gender Splendor offers prompts for our inner voices that build gender resilience, pride, and empowerment, even in the face of outside challenges. A must read for everyone, old or young, who either is or wishes to embrace a ‘gender fabulous’ person.”

--Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D., author of The Gender Creative Child. Director of Mental Health, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Child and Adolescent Gender Center

"What a beautiful book, just the uplift we need—and deserve—for affirming our trans or queer gender truths in the face of a difficult world. Written with great love, drawing on the hard-won insight of a treasured trans elder, Gender Splendor is a source of wisdom and play, exploration and healing, a sparkling celebration of everything we are and can become." 

--Caro De Robertis, Stonewall Book Award-winning author of Cantoras and The Palace of Eros. Professor, Creative Writing Department, San Francisco State University

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Willy's CV

 

“It is an incredible book that I really recommend everyone read. Because it combines and defies genres, it’s both a great book if you want to read about a Chinese American experience in San Francisco, if you want to read about a queer experience, if you want to read a trans memoir, but also if someone came to me and said, 'Oh my God, I just found out that I know a trans person and I have no idea what to do with myself,' I would actually give them this book because there’s so much teaching in it and it’s very, very accessible. It bounces between a trans 101 and intersectional politics 101 and then it goes much, much deeper and farther than even other trans memoirs. You guys have to buy this book.”

 

--Tristan Taormino, Lambda Literary Award-

winning author of eight books and editor of

twenty-five anthologies, effusively praising 

Born on the Edge of Race and Gender on her radio show. Listen here.

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    Transforming the memoir genre into a cultural competency tool

Born on the Edge of Race and Gender:
A Voice for Cultural Competency

In this historic moment of transgender visibility in the U.S., writer, activist, and public health consultant Willy Wilkinson’s Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency uses the power of storytelling to contextualize one of the most misunderstood social issues of our time. Whether navigating the men’s locker room like a “stealth trans Houdini,” accessing lifesaving health care, or appreciating his son’s recognition of him as a “transformer,” Wilkinson compellingly illustrates the unique, difficult, and sometimes comical experiences of transgender life. This poetic, journalistic memoir shines an intersectional beacon on the ambiguity and complexity of mixed heritage, transgender, and disability experience, and offers an intimate window into how current legislative and policy battles impact the lives of transgender people. A seasoned public health consultant and cultural competency trainer, Wilkinson also provides practical tools and resources to help community health organizations, educational institutions, and businesses create LGBTQ- and trans-affirming systems. Learn more.

Available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Smashwords. If you'd prefer to order the book through your local bookstore, it's available through ingram with global distribution. 

 

Hear about the personal impact of recent victories in California and what the "medicine" is.

 

Willy honored: Transgender Law Center's 2014 Vanguard Awardee

On October 2, 2014 Willy was presented with the 2014 Claire Skiffington Vanguard Award at SPARK!, Transgender Law Center’s annual gala, at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. Learn More

 

 

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Featured Publications

Transgender Studies Quarterly

Willy’s contribution to the inaugural edition of Transgender Studies Quarterly, a keyword essay entitled “Cultural Competency,” provides a global perspective on the need for transgender cultural competency in health services, education, businesses, government agencies, law enforcement, faith-based institutions, and others throughout society.  

 

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community

Willy’s contribution to this comprehensive resource, a creative non-fiction piece entitled “Reveling in Our Authenticity,” addresses the intersections of mixed heritage experience and trans experience: ambiguity and complexity, layers of cross-cultural experience, and societal assessments of “realness”—as well as the confidence and courage to defy exclusion and revel in our bold authenticity. 

Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family, and Themselves

Willy’s contribution to this groundbreaking anthology, entitled “Sculptor,” uses the metaphor of his father’s work as a fine wood sculptor to explore the ways in which Willy sheds the impact of racism, the violent gaze, shame, and the legacy of Asian female subjugation to sculpt himself as a trans man and father.

Check out Willy's "My Authentic Life" video, filmed spontaneously at the Transgender Leadership Summit in Southern California in April 2014. Hear about his kids' transgender stuffed animals and his work providing LGBTQ and trans-specific cultural competency training for a wide variety of audiences.

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