A novel by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
November 11, 2025 • 5.5 x 8.25 • 272 pages • 9781566897419
From iconic author and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore comes a breathless search for intimacy and connection, ranging from club culture to the art world, from the AIDS crisis to COVID-19.
Terry Dactyl has lived many lives. Raised by boisterous lesbian mothers in Seattle, she comes of age as a trans girl in the 1980s in a world of dancing queens and late-night house parties just as the AIDS crisis ravages their world. After moving to New York City, Terry finds a new family among gender-bending club kids bonded by pageantry and drugs, fiercely loyal and unapologetic. She lands a job at a Soho gallery, where, after partying all night, she spends her days bringing club culture to the elite art world.
Twenty years later, in a panic during the COVID-19 lockdown, Terry returns to a Seattle stifled by gentrification and pandemic isolation until resistance erupts following the murder of George Floyd, and her search for community ignites once again.
In propulsive, intoxicating prose, Terry Dactyl traces an extraordinary journey from adolescence to adulthood, delivering a vital portrait of queer identity in all its peril and possibility.
About the Author
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of seven books, and the editor of six anthologies. Her most recent title, Touching the Art, was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Book Award. Her previous title, The Freezer Door, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Her new novel is Terry Dactyl.
Praise for Terry Dactyl
"Expansive and confidential, nostalgic and hopeful, Terry Dactyl follows its singular, indelible heroine and her search for meaning and community over the span of several decades, from growing up in the AIDS crisis to the club and art scenes of the 1990s to the isolation of the early COVID pandemic, all through the voice of Sycamore’s piercing, mesmerizing prose. You won’t be able to put it down." —Lisa Ko, author of Memory Piece
"The historical novel on acid. Terry’s existence—between protesting George Floyd's murder, and chatting about a new cruising app called Sniffies—creates a recognition of social absurdity that Mattilda elevates with her iconoclastic, stylish beauty into a work that has as much to say about vulnerability as it does about trees, and about time itself. This is a book about consciousness, art, and "getting ready" to be part of a world that will never be ready for you.” —Sarah Schulman, author of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
“Terry Dactyl is the realest fiction I've read in a long time. It's the exact sort of novel we need at this (or any) historical juncture: hilarious, moving and radically political. The writing sparkles. Sycamore has excelled herself and that's saying something.” —Isabel Waidner, author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
"Terry Dactyl made me cry and made me laugh out loud. It has all the pain and joy, struggle and delight of the lives of those who color outside the lines. It's a book about family and friendship and love and knowing when and how to change your life." —McKenzie Wark, author of Love and Money, Sex and Death
Praise for Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
“With an intellect that supersedes social boundaries through sheer insistence, Sycamore chronicles the paradox of inhabiting a fluid life in a rigid world." —Kristen Millares Young, The Washington Post
“There are no questions answered in this book. Instead, questions create further questions, further attempts at rediscovery and at blurring boundaries. Hers is a welcome blurring and, in a culture of relentless demarcation, a necessary one.” —Kristen Arnett, New York Times Book Review
“I so admire [Sycamore’s] appetite to get down and dirty, to wield non sequitur with grace and power, to ponder the past while sticking with the present, to quest unceasingly. I stand deeply inspired and instructed by [her] great wit, candor, inventiveness, and majesty.” —Maggie Nelson, author of Like Love
"Mattilda is a dazzling writer of uncommon truths, a challenging writer who refuses to conform to conventionality. Her agitation is an inspiration.” —Justin Torres, National Book Award winning author of Blackouts
