We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Addie Tsai. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Addie below.

Addie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on was as co-conceiver with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein, a dance theater production that not only adapted Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but also considered the events in her life that informed her timeless work. For personal reasons, I returned to the novel in my early 30s for the first time in a decade, since reading the novel in a Romantics Literature course in college. It impacted me then, but when I read it as an adult, at a time I really needed it, the novel gripped me in an entirely new way. I became voracious to read everything I could get my hands on that had something to do with Frankenstein – about Mary Shelley’s life, literary theory, and other retellings and adaptations that interpreted the novel through different angles. It was then that the thought occurred to me that it would make an engaging dance theater production. At the time it wasn’t being adapted into stage or dance like it has in the past decade since our production. I’ve been in love with dance my entire life, but I’ve never had the opportunity to fully immerse myself in any single dance practice (except for classic Argentine tango) and I certainly had no facility to choreograph or mount an undertaking like this on my own. I reached out to Dominic Walsh, a contemporary ballet and dance theater choreographer whose work I’d admired for several years, about collaborating on a dance theater production based on Frankenstein. After years of discussion, Dominic signed on to the undertaking and we co-created this work together through his dance theater company, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater. It was life-changing for me because it gave me a new way to relate to dance in which my many years as a spectator became an asset. For the entirety of my childhood, I watched my father produce and act in Mandarin dramas in his own non-profit with his friends in Houston, and those years of watching my father’s productions while not understanding them (I only know a few words in Mandarin) also aided me in the creative choices I offered in our collaboration towards lighting, sound, costume, staging, and story in our production. It was from that experience that I learned there were other ways I could express my love of dance outside of training or performing on stage, which became revelatory for me, and also led me to pursue and complete a PhD in Dance, so that I could become familiar with the academic field of dance scholarship, as well as contribute to it myself.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m dominantly a writer. I started and honed a writing practice in poetry from the time I was a young child and earned an MFA in Creative Writing in 2005. I slowly expanded past writing poetry and began to write nonfiction. When my first book contract, a memoir, fell through, I reshaped the nucleus of that book into my debut, Dear Twin, a queer Asian young adult novel about twinhood and childhood trauma. Since that beginning, I’ve also published a second novel, a queer Asian retelling about Frankenstein, Unwieldy Creatures, and now I write a little bit of everything. In that time I have also developed a photographic practice, largely double exposure self portraits, on Polaroid and 35mm, and sometimes I explore capturing movement (of my own body as well as of the outside world) on video. I’m interested in collaboration, most significantly with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, on Victor Frankenstein and others, in which I contribute dramaturgical skills to the construction of the narrative as well as the shaping of other details related to staging, music, costume, lighting, and sound design. I also have a scholarly practice. I earned my PhD in Dance in 2018, and my first scholarly monograph, Straight White Men Can’t Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture, will be published through Bloomsbury this year. I’ve also written dance reviews.

I teach Creative Writing at William & Mary and I occasionally teach creative writing workshops to adults through various organizations. I’ve developed a longstanding editorial practice. I’m the features and reviews editor for Anomaly and I’ve edited for various magazines across my career. In 2020, I founded just femme & dandy, a literary and arts magazine (and a paying market) on LGBTQIA+ fashion. I also sensitivity read and provide transcription services. Finally, I provide freelance publicity for queer writers and writers of color.

With every hat I wear, I attempt to embody as inclusive an approach as possible, one that is pro-Black, anti-racist, and accessible as possible. I intentionally push against trends within each of these fields that I believe are informed by our informal and formal training within white supremacy and lead with openness, generosity, and enthusiasm.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

In 2020, I received a small individual grant from Critical Minded, who was offering short-term grants just as COVID began, to cultural critics of color. A few months later, Critical Minded reached out to those recipients personally via email, announcing that they were giving grants to organizations led by people of color. It felt like such a fortuitous moment, as I had been thinking of starting an LGBTQIA+ fashion magazine. I applied for and received one of those grants, which enabled me to start just femme & dandy. Since that time, Critical Minded has remained a consistent source of support. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have without them.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

My relationship to social media has been a work in progress, and it took some time to shut out all of the “rules” people will suggest about how to build a social media presence as an artist. I built my audience on social media, which is small but mighty, through being genuine and organic. What’s worked for me is to not think of social media as a marketing tool, but instead to think of presenting a thoughtful, genuine, and sincere version of myself that still protects my privacy. I believe it is that representation that has drawn an audience that appreciates my combination of excitement, curiosity, and vulnerability. That presence absolutely helped get my second novel out there and helped me form a vibrant community. I’m still moved (and shocked!) when I run into a follower who recognizes me and tells me that the expressions I offer on social media have been helpful or validating for them. My advice is trite but true: be yourself. Share posts that feel meaningful and also connect with others as well. Throw away the rules of how one is supposed to post to encourage engagement – it will happen naturally. But also protect your privacy and be wary of sharing too much online – that becomes a less safe enterprise by the minute. As social media becomes more harmful, I think we need to really consider where and what we share of ourselves, and be as intentional about those choices as possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.addietsai.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/addieisunwieldy
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/addie.tsai
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/addie-tsai-86468951/
• Other: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/addieisunwieldy.bsky.social

Image Credits

Headshot and cover image: Bex Lawson
Polaroid: Addie Tsai