Paper short abstract:

This paper develops a fishy trans folkloristics using archival remains, poetry, visual art, and material culture of trans women sex workers in the port city of St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

Paper long abstract:

This paper develops a fishy approach to trans folkloristics using embodied and ecological vernacular knowledges of trans women sex workers in the port city of St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Feeling fishy - an autoethnographic methodological approach to trans research-creation - comes to represent the queer interplay of archival ephemerality and oceanic ecologies that emerge through explorations of Newfoundland trans women's sexual labour. In addition to archival research and critical analysis, I work with the poetry, visual art, and material culture of Newfoundland trans women sex workers to emphasize the need for creative and multi-method approaches to trans folkloristics. Building on earlier folklore scholarship about trans worldmaking in Newfoundland (Greenhill 1995, 2014), this article offers evocative autoethnographic insight into minoritarian social worlds of Newfoundland trans women sex workers.