Synopsis

In these lyrical essays, Alexis Stratton invites us to join them as they trace the intersections of identity, grief, and belonging across four continents. Burned out by years of LGBTQ+ activism, at age 32, Stratton embarks on a multiyear journey through a dozen countries—from the stark Australian desert to the winding streets of Taipei—yearning to find healing in the movement between worlds. They revisit loved ones in South Korea, where they taught English in their twenties, and they summon the courage to come out. They talk of philosophy and loneliness with a New Delhi hotelier and share Taiwanese delicacies with a queer local who greets them like a long-lost friend. In Eating Turtle, Stratton finds, home is not a place but the body you carry, the stories you tell, and the people who welcome you in.

Praise for Eating Turtle

In a world where it is increasingly difficult to be different from the mainstream, Eating Turtle provides readers with an intimate roadmap to courage and connection. Traveling the world and encountering difference in the self and others, Stratton’s gentle and beautiful voice guides us to knowing—and loving—ourselves and the world more deeply: “It’s like looking in a mirror, but different.”

– Cassie Premo Steele, Author of Beaver Girl

These five essays travel not only through India and Korea, Taiwan and Australia, but also through grief and the shadow of death, through shifting gender identity, relationships that last and those that fade. This short collection manages to sound some deep waters, showing the capacity of travel and experience to shape the soul. Alexis Stratton's command of the essay genre and their honesty and authenticity here invite the reader to travel alongside them, and ultimately return to a home they didn't expect to find.

– Jackson Culpepper, Author of Songs on the Water

Alexis Stratton has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, and their stories and essays have appeared in storySouth, Hayden's Ferry Review, Matador Review, and Oyez Review, among other publications. In 2022, their fiction chapbook Anywhere Else but Here was published by Fjords Review, and in 2024, they published Trans Kids, Our Kids: Stories and Resources from the Frontlines of the Movement for Transgender Youth (Ig Publishing, co-authored with Adam Polaski and Jasmine Beach-Ferrara). Alexis lives in Richmond, VA, where they work as a freelance writer and an LGBTQ+ rights advocate.