Margot Wilson
Margot Wilson is an author, editor and owner of Castle Carrington Publishing Group. Stephanie Castle Publications (which publishes trans fiction), TransGender Publishing (the first Canadian publisher specializing in publishing transgender life stories and non-fiction), Perceptions Press (which publishes innovative, avant-garde (and occasionally provocative) transgender fiction and non-fiction) and All Genders Press (Which publishes LGBTQ+ fiction and non-fiction) are all imprints of Castle Carrington Publishing Group.
A recently retired professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, Margot has previously undertaken anthropological research in rural villages, at a shelter for abandoned women and children, and at the Danish-Bangladesh Leprosy Mission in Bangladesh.
Since 2014, Margot’s longstanding research interests in gender issues and personal narratives have led her to undertake life history research and story-telling in collaboration with elders in the Canadian, American, Austalian and British transgender communities. One of those elders was Stephanie Castle who passed away in the spring of 2017. Shortly after Stephanie’s death and based on conversations between Margot and Stephanie during their almost 3 years of research together (see below), Margot opened Castle Carrington Publishing, TransGender Publishing, All Genders Press and assumed ownership of Stephanie Castle Publications and Perceptions Press.
In 2018, Margot published the first in a series of life histories, Girl in the Dream: Stephanie (Sydney) Castle Heal, a Transgender Life, Stephanie’s life story. Also published in 2018 was a second edition of Feelings: A Transsexual’s Explanation of a Baffling Condition. Originally published in 1992, Feelings was Stephanie’s first non-fiction book on transgender issues. Other non-fiction books by Stephanie include The Zenith Experience: Encounters and Memories in a Transgender Setting and Prisoner of Gender (see Non-Fiction) and 9 novels with transgender themes (see Available Now and Cascade Series Novels). Since then, a number of other trans life histories have been published along with a number of novels by trans authors and/or with trans themes (see Available Now). A number of new fiction and non-fiction volumes are planned for 2021 and 2022 (see Coming Soon).
If you have a manuscript that you would like Margot to consider for publication, please use the contact form below.
Stephanie Castle
Stephanie Castle was a Canadian transgender woman and early advocate for the rights of transgender people, especially, for those incarcerated in the Canadian prison system. Author of numerous fiction and non-fiction books that address transgender subjects, Stephanie said that the driving force that kept her active mind always well oiled and her physical being moving was her writing activity, which she described as her occupational therapy. She treated her fictional writing as a late retirement project that paid handsome dividends in the form of endless satisfaction.
For Stephanie the study of human personalities provided endless fascination as it is from this very broad resource that her characterizations were drawn. In reference to her own writing, she said, “You latch onto a personality that fits your plot and as you develop a mental picture of them and instinctively get inside the character, you tend to move with their mental attitudes, moods, emotions, and passions. An interesting aspect for me is the feeling of a long standing friendship with my favourite characters and as the stories are mostly to do with a continuum of today’s life in and around Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and the Okanagan district of BC, some supporting characters appear like old friends suitably revived for a new plot.” Thus, Dr. Margaret Myers, a gender specialist appears in most of Stephanie’s stories. Likewise, the law office of Barnes, Ahrens, Macdonald & Naismith and Camp Golden, a recovery program for individuals with drug and alcohol issues, appear regularly throughout Stephanie’s novels. When this rich experience is coupled with a deep hands-on experience of being transsexual and living successfully with the condition that had been present for a lifetime, and acting as a counselor for at least ten years, Stephanie’s stories carry the stamp of authenticity. i