Chrysalis Quarterly Issues (1991-1998)

Chrysalis Quarterly was the house journal of the nonprofit AEGIS, The American Educational Gender Information Service. It was professional in appearance and content at a time when most transgender community magazines were being produced on dot-matrix printers.

Chrysalis averaged sixty pages, with 80# off-white pages and glossy cardstock cover. The cover, and, when we could afford it, the interior pages, were printed with gray ink and a burgundy spot cover. Each issue was themed.

I published all twelve issues, and edited nine of the twelve. I invited Holly Boswell to edit issue no. 6 (the Goddess issue), anthropologist Jason Cromwell to edit the all-FTM issue #9, and intersex activists Cheryl Chase and Martha Coventry edited an issue on intersex—the last issue, #12.

The premiere issue was designed by Stephanie Rose. Stephanie and Margaux Schaffer collaborated on the second issue, and Margaux produced a formal design with issue #3. Her use of white space and the Garamond font guaranteed a magazine that was pleasant to the eyes.

I did the layout from issue #4 onward, with occasional help with images from JoAnn Roberts. Margaux’s brilliant design kept me on the straight and narrow.

The name evolved over the years from Chrysalis Quarterly to Chrysalis: The Journal of Transgressive Gender Identities because the magazine wanted to come out twice a year instead of once per quarter and because the new title better fit the content.

Material from Chrysalis has been widely cited, and the twelve issues are scarce and sought after.

High Praise for First Issue (PDF)

The reaction to Chrysalis was overwhelmingly positive. The above pages from issues nos. 2 and 3 feature letters from Sister Mary Elizabeth (now, once again, Joanna Clark), Ann Bolin, Marietta Pathy Allen, George R. Brown, Kim Elizabeth Stuart, the late Vern Bullough, the late Lee Frances Heller, and the late JoAnn Roberts. J.C. was a remarkable woman who transitioned in a small town in rural Georgia in her early teens by sheer force of personality and determination. I provided her with referrals to a therapist, then an endocrinologist, and eventually to Dr. Eugene Schrang for sex reassignment surgery. She was the inspiration for the character Laura Ann Sykes in my novel The Problem.