“You set out. You don’t know where you are going. The light is burnt, orange and fiery. We are going along. The sunset is key, but the wind is so strong we almost fall over. Give me your hand you say and we pull ourselves up over the cliff edge. You remember the day we spent in Golden Gate park. You told me your grandmother bought you that red and white tracksuit. We are looking for something/one but no idea what. Hey, I tried to love you across the smacks and burn marks. I had a feeling I would know you in community. Yes, we left some marks.”

Nicola Harwood, 2026

“I was never going to become a beautiful, passable woman, and I was never going to be a man. It’s a quandary. But the trans condition is a beautiful mystery; it’s one of nature’s best ideas”.

Anohni, 2016

Nicola Harwood is a gender-queer, interdisciplinary artist, writer and teacher. Their plays, performances and installation projects have been produced in Canada, Europe and the US.

Recently they started painting. Nicola often works in collaboration with other artists and has facilitated many art, writing and theatre projects in communities. They are grateful to live on the ancestral, unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations also known as Vancouver, Canada.