Philadelphia Trans Oral History Project Timeline Zines
August 2026
The Philadelphia Trans Oral History Project — which launched around the pandemic and has been recording and preserving the stories of trans and gender nonconforming people connected to the city — is launching a new zine series to make trans history more accessible.
The project is a partnership with the John J. Wilcox Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center (WWCC) and several departments at the University of Pennsylvania — including the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies; the Price Lab for Digital Humanities; the Department of Sociology; the Research Data & Digital Scholarship team; and the Annenberg School of Communications.
“There is such a hunger for people’s life stories and the wisdom of our elders, but it’s a lot to sit through a two- to five-hour interview that’s audio only, or even to sift through a transcript,” said Alex Hanesworth — an artist whose illustrations, formatting and layouts provided structure for the zines.
Generally, it’s students, researchers, or academics and historians who seek out or know how to find oral histories as part of their work. But these histories are important for everyone to access, Hanesworth said. Stories are often kept in an archive, which may or may not include digital access. However, even oral histories stored in a public-facing domain don’t find every person who would benefit from listening to those interviews.
“The zines offer a different entry point for learning about trans history. Having a physical object that can be traded around or passed around, left in different places — this means that they can be encountered without being specifically sought out,” Hanesworth said. “That’s the power of zines. They’re physically loose in the world and can travel and have their own encounters.”
The zine is free, please print and distribute widely! It can be printed on double-sided legal paper (by any office printer). Access the zine and folding instructions digitally here.