On Community: Field Notes #8 by Casey Plett

We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it's slipping away?

We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett draws on a range of firsthand experiences to start a conversation about the larger implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol. With each thread a cumulative definition of community, and what it has come to mean to Plett, emerges.

Looking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community's boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another. (From Biblioasis)

• Casey Plett's debut novel Little Fish, an exploration of LGBTQ life in the Prairies, optioned to become a film
• Casey Plett brings trans love to the forefront in short story collection A Dream of a Woman
• Why it was important to Casey Plett to portray realistic transgender life in her debut novel
• 46 works of Canadian nonfiction to read in fall 2023

Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love. She is awinner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Plett splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ont.