My Name Was Baby: An Intersex Memoir

“I was born a holiday late, and I still wasn’t done cooking.”

So begins my life and one of the early chapters in My Name Was Baby: An Intersex Memoir, forthcoming from Plainspoken Books next fall. This is, without a doubt, the most important work of my life.

In October 2023, I read Alicia Roth Weigel’s Inverse Cowgirl. I was blown away. My whole life, I’ve never thought of my intersex experiences as extraordinary, as worthy of putting into a book. But here was a book of someone else’s intersex story, beautifully filling the pages of a book. I started to think that maybe, just maybe, the world could use my story.

This was in large part because as I looked around at all of the intersex stories, they were all from a nonbinary or feminine perspective. To be crystal clear, these stories are very important. They just weren’t reflective of my intersex experience growing up as a man.

Then 2024 came around, and I was very busy. There were great and terrible things that happened in my 2024. I let the idea of writing my own memoir setting into my list of ideas to write.

Then, January 2025 came. The inauguration of Donald Trump to his second term. And Executive Order 14168. It was a direct attack on transgender people, attempting to define sex and gender not only as the same thing, but as a strict binary. And in that same order, the president attempted to erase intersex people from the conversation.

I emailed my agent, telling her about my memoir idea. She thought it was great and told me to 1) write the thing and 2) build my platform. Got it. I set out to do just that. Then, a couple weeks later, she received an email about a new imprint coming out of the University Press of Kansas. Plainspoken Books. They were looking for just what I’d been talking about.

Soon, we cobbled together a book proposal, followed by coffee with the publisher, followed by a contract.

Why? Because the universe is telling me that I need to tell my story, and I need to tell it now. We’re bringing this book to market ahead of the midterm elections so that it JUST MIGHT make a difference.

And Alicia Roth Weigel? She’s written a foreword for the book, bringing everything full circle.

I cannot wait for you all to read this.