Renato Gandia

Why The Leaves Still Fallow matters right now

Some books arrive at exactly the moment they’re needed—not because they predict the world, but because they refuse to look away from it.

The Leaves Still Fallow is an anthology of queer love stories, poems, and essays. On the surface, that sounds gentle, even familiar. But this book knows what it’s doing. Every contributor donated their work. One hundred percent of the proceeds go directly to TransActual and Mermaids UK, organizations providing critical support to trans youth and adults. This is not art adjacent to solidarity. It is solidarity, rendered through language.

I’m writing about this anthology now because context matters. Where and when we read matters.

Here in Alberta, trans and gender-diverse lives have increasingly become sites of public debate—spoken about in legislation, in classrooms, in headlines, often without the voices of trans people themselves at the centre. Whatever one’s political position, the result is unmistakable: trans communities are living under heightened scrutiny, precarity, and fatigue. Care is being replaced with suspicion. Complexity with slogans.

In that climate, The Leaves Still Fallow feels quietly defiant.

Rather than responding to hostility with spectacle or outrage, the anthology chooses another register altogether. It centres love—not as sentimentality, but as endurance. Love that persists through grief. Love that survives transition. Love that is carried and remade within chosen families. The book does not argue for trans lives. It assumes them. It does not ask for permission. It practices care.

That distinction matters to me.

As a queer writer, I’ve grown wary of how often our stories are asked to perform—to explain, to justify, to educate on demand. This anthology refuses that transactional model. The work here is offered freely, but not cheaply. It trusts readers to meet the writing on its own terms and to understand that reading, too, can be an ethical act.

My own piece found a home in The Leaves Still Fallow not because it is loud, but because it is aligned. The book understands that literature doesn’t have to shout to be consequential. Sometimes it simply has to stand still and say: we are still here, and we will take care of each other.

What moves me most is the material clarity of the project. This isn’t awareness as abstraction. Buying the book translates directly into support—into counselling, advocacy, safety, and survival for trans people. In a moment when gestures of allyship can feel hollow or symbolic, that directness feels grounding.

What also deserves naming is the care behind the book itself. The Leaves Still Fallow exists because Big Thinking Publishing, a community-led independent press in the North of England, chose to imagine publishing as an act of responsibility. They brought this project into being, held it with intention, and invited writers to participate not for exposure, but for alignment.

I’m grateful to Big Thinking for making space for this anthology—and for including a short story I wrote among so many generous, urgent voices. To be part of a project where every contributor donates their work, and where every copy sold translates directly into support for trans lives, is a rare thing. It reminds me why literature still matters: not as ornament, but as infrastructure.

If you’re looking for a way to support trans communities that goes beyond statements, beyond algorithms, beyond the churn of online outrage, this is one place to start. Not because it will fix anything on its own—but because it insists that care can be collective, intentional, and shared. Right now, that insistence feels necessary.

From wherever you’re reading—here in Alberta or elsewhere—The Leaves Still Fallow offers a way to support trans lives beyond statements. The book is available now via Ink Bookshop, with all proceeds going directly to TransActual and Mermaids UK.