Lucy, Uncensored

A road trip through gender identity, self-expression, and the thorny process of figuring out where you fit after high school as an out-and-proud transgender teen.

Lucy imagines college as more than a chance to party with other drama nerds and be roommates with her best friend Callie. College will be her fresh start. For the first time, she’ll be able to introduce herself as Lucy to people she hasn’t gone to school with since kindergarten. Plus, she happens to live an hour away from one of the most prestigious theater programs in the country. She’s always dreamed of going to Central, but when she finally has a chance to visit, it’s not what she imagined.

While Lucy and Callie are on their campus tour, two kids from their high school make the typical transphobic comments Lucy’s gotten used to in her small town. She starts to worry that her dream school might end up being High School 2.0. What if she belongs somewhere else? Somewhere that she can truly have a fresh start?

When Lucy finds a beautiful school with a great theater program on a list of the most LGBTQ+ friendly colleges, it seems like fate--except that the school is hundreds of miles away. And there’s something unexpected about it: it’s a women’s college. As far as she can tell, they’ve never admitted a trans woman. Will they let Lucy in? There’s only one way to find out: road trip!

Teghan Hammond lives and drinks excessive amounts of coffee in northern Indiana. She has a deep love for the LGBTQIA+ community, as seen in both her writing and volunteer work. Despite changing her major in college about a dozen times, she has always wanted to advocate for this community in whatever way she can. When she’s not tearing down gender norms, Teghan is probably watching cartoons or gaming.

As a content development editor for American Girl, Mel Hammond wrote advice and activity books and developed fiction books. Now she writes full time, alongside two feline coworkers who have a variety of skills, including sitting on her keyboard and deleting entire paragraphs of text. Mel lives in Madison, Wisconsin.