About Carolyn Hays

Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author who has chosen to publish to A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter under a pen name to protect her family’s privacy. Her novels have been published by Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins; her books are also widely translated. A Girlhood will have four overseas editions, including those by Picador UK and Flammarion in France. Her past books have been listed as New York Times Notable Books of the Year and Kirkus’s Best Fiction of the Year; she’s written for National Public Radio and the Washington Post.

Click here to read an essay Carolyn wrote about using a pen name. Essays written by Carolyn have appeared in Salon, The Advocate, and The Daily Beast. Here is her interview on NPR.

Praise for A Girlhood

“It’s impossible to read this book and not root for the fierce, human, beautiful family at its center and the daughter that they—“like tanks”—protect against those who try to steal her joy. A Girlhood is, at its heart, a love story, a grand American love story. It educates without scolding, inspires without sentimentalizing. Who should read this gorgeously written book? Not merely anyone parenting a transgender child, or anyone parenting any child, but anyone who’s ever been a child. This—this—is the book we need now.” — Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother (W. W. Norton)

“A Girlhood is a transfixing odyssey of a mother stewarding a preternaturally wise child, and an American family circling to protect that child.... I saw facets of my own trans identity I’d never pondered, questions about the construction of self I’d never even thought to pose. At one point Hays says, ‘I want you to build a full rich library of your girlhood—not the story of someone you had to pretend to be.’ The radical positivity of that sentiment put me in tears... A Girlhood is...an act of epic compassion.” — Diana Goetsch, author of This Body I Wore (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

“... searing, haunting, and inspiring...a story that asks us to consider what we would do if the simple act of loving our own child threatened to cost us everything. In prose memorable for its gentleness and wisdom, Ms. Hays’ story is about more than the transgender question: it’s about ignorance and wisdom; hatred and love; men, women, and children. In the end, A Girlhood is about all of us.” — Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She’s Not There and Good Boy

“The memoir has the value of collective conquest as narrator and reader proceed together through the redefinition of spaces, territories, as the author calls them. By ... questioning concepts such as intimacy, dignity, reputation, self-determination... Sharp, unsettling, painful, beautiful.” — Teresa Ciabatti, La Lettura, Corriere dell Sera

“Carolyn's commitment to her child's health, safety, humanity and freedom against an onslaught of anti-trans regulations is a harrowing narrative of parental love, as is her openness to learning from her daughter.” –– NPR’s The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry

“An incredibly poignant and timely story for trans families everywhere. I wish my parents had access to these words, stories, and beautiful thoughts while raising me.” — Tommy Dorfman, actress, writer, director

“Touching, combative, compelling... this memoir begins with the suspense of a thriller and ends with ... hope. [Hays] talks about faith, motherhood, feminism, adolescence, courage, and fear.” — Vogue [Italian edition]