By Any Other Name: Why I am an Out and Proud Transgender Author

By E. Chris Garrison

When I first started putting myself out there as an author, I used my first name, Eric, although I hadn’t gone by it since 1999, using my middle name instead. Why did I drop Eric in 1999? Well, as the title of this article implies, I am transgender. Which means, I have felt for most of my life that I should have been born a girl. A fact I hid as a very close secret for decades, because the world wasn’t very friendly toward people like me. It still isn’t, but it’s gotten much better in the past 10 years.

So if I was going by Chris, why did my books say Eric? Well, I’d published articles in college as Eric, when I was part of the staff of the Purdue Engineer Magazine…