I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. — Barry Goldwater, 1964, in his acceptance speech as the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States. A sleepy campus in Ohio. Summer of ’64. Mingus, the Beatles, Nightwood, the fever dream of Goldwater, late night student conversations—all in … Read more

“A vulnerable and vital memoir about the search for identity and belonging outside the restrictive masculine gender norms of 1950s America. Novelist Keith Maillard’s journey to locate himself as nonbinary in ‘a narrative of gender’ that had long excluded him is a valuable addition to literature about the lives and histories of trans and nonbinary … Read more

EXCERPT FROM FATHERLESS I was in my office at the university on an ordinary Monday morning—March 3, 1997—when I got the phone call, heard an unfamiliar man’s voice asking if I was Keith Maillard. I said I was. “Are you related to Eugene Charles Maillard?” If I were writing this as a scene in a … Read more

“Keith Maillard’s Twin Studies is a novel that challenges everything we think we know about family and the nature of love. Three sets of twins struggle with loss, identity, and adulthood, and in the middle of it all, Karen, a beleaguered, beautiful, and wryly intelligent mother, tries to keep everyone afloat, even as she feels her own … Read more