Kate Carroll de Gutes

Kate Carroll de Gutes, Iowa City, Iowa, and Portland, Oregon, is a genderqueer writer whose work explores sexuality and the qualities of gender identity and expression in order to explore how butch women are dismantling traditional modes of masculinity and inhabiting a territory of masculine identity that has nothing to do with cis-men. As critics have become louder and more oppositional about issues of gender identity and expression, de Gutes feels an urgent need to counter and subvert traditional images and narratives. Their first book, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won a Lambda Literary Award, the Oregon Book Award, and an Indie’s First Award. Their second book began as an experiment on social media, was published as The Authenticity Experiment: Lessons From the Best and Worst Year of My Life, and was awarded an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction. Forthcoming essays explore the ways that having a girlhood cannot but change the masculine qualities butches adopt, as well as butches’ relationships to their bodies.

This bio/description was originally published in 2022 and updated in 2022. For more current information, please refer to the award recipient's website (if provided).