Trans Femme Futures with Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift

Join us at The Scarlett Letters bookshop the night before Trans Pride London with authors Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift to discuss their book Trans Femme Futures!

'Femme' describes a constellation of queer, gendered expressions that uproot expectations of what it means to be feminine. Building upon experiences of transformation, belonging and harm, this book is a transfeminist call for collective liberation.

Trans Femme Futures envisions the future through everyday actions that revolutionise our lives. Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift discuss struggles around trans healthcare, the need for collectives over institutions, the importance of mutual care, and transfeminism as abolition.

The authors show how social change can be achieved through transformative practices that allow queer life to thrive in a time of climate, health, political and economic crises.

About the authors

Dr Nat Raha is a poet and activist-scholar. She is the author of four books of poetry, including apparitions (nines) (Nightboat Books, 2024) and of sirens, body & faultlines (Boiler House Press, 2018). With Mijke van der Drift, Nat is co-author of Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (Pluto Press, 2024) and co-editor of Radical Transfeminism zine. Nat’s poetry is anthologised in 100 Queer Poems, We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, and Versus Versus. Recent critical writing appears in Social Text, Queer Print in Europe, Transgender Marxism, Gestures: A Body of Work and Third Text. Performance work includes epistolary (on carceral islands), co- commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival, Scotland and TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, Ireland, 2023. Nat has been active in numerous collectives over the past 15 years, including in queer and trans mutual aid, healthcare, and anti-austerity groups. She teaches in Fine Art Critical Studies at the Glasgow School of Art.

Mijke van der Drift works on transfeminist and anti-imperial ethics through philosophies of movement, collective action, and counter-cultural production. This work takes the form of writings, performances, and sound pieces, often by way of inter-disciplinary collaborations. Mijke is Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, London and co-chair of its Union branch. Mijke is founding member of the arts collective Red Forest. Together with Nat Raha, Mijke co-authored Trans Femme Futures (Pluto 2024), published in Social Text, with Cambridge University Press, and co-edit the Radical Transfeminism Zine.