Shael lives in a vast prison camp, a monstrosity developed after centuries of warfare and environmental catastrophe. As a young transfeminine person, they risk abject violence if their identity and love affair with Coe, an insurrectionary activist, are discovered. But desire and rebellion flare, and soon Shael escapes to Riverwish, a settlement attempting to forge a new way of living that counters the camp’s repression.

As the complexities of this place unfold before Shael, Disobedience asks: How can a community redress harm without reproducing unaccountable forms of violence? How do we heal? What might a compassionate, sustainable model of justice look like?

This is a remarkable work of queer and trans speculative fiction that imagines how alternative forms of connection and power can refuse the violent institutions that engulf us.

Daniel Sarah Karasik (they/them) is a writer and social movement worker in Toronto. Their plays have been produced across North American and Germany and they are the author of five previous books: the play collection The Crossing Guard & In Full Light; the individually published plays The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee and Little Death; the poetry collection Hungry; and the short story collection Faithful and Other Stories. A graduate of the Young Writers Programme at the Royal Court Theatre in London, UK, and a former Playwright-in-Residence at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, they have been recognized with the Toronto Arts Foundation's Emerging Artist Award, the CBC Fiction Prize, and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award, among other honours. They are a co-founder and coordinator of the network Artists for Climate & Migrant Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty, and their political journalism appears frequently in Briarpatch Magazine.

Daniel Sarah Karasik's profile page