Pia-Paulina Guilmoth’s Flowers Drink the River reveals a moonlit landscape where mud, earth and stone envelop, and the forest floors are wet with glowing dew. It is a love note to rural, working-class trans women and lesbians and the landscapes of central Maine. 

This book spans the first two years of Pia’s gender transition, as she photographs her community and the hostility and beauty of living here. Photographs of moths and glowing spider silk, mud-soaked bodies intertwined, a burning house, nocturnal animals, family, friends, lovers, and careful rituals adorn flash-drenched landscapes. Flowers Drink the River is a search for beauty and escape, resistance, safety, and magic.

“Each night for a week before my first HRT consultation I would pack a Zyn in my top lip and sit in the same spot in the orchard covered in Scent Killer Gold, wearing a ghillie suit, holding a tray full of crushed apples in one hand, and a 30 foot makeshift shutter release cable attached to my 4x5 in the other, waiting for the deer to visit. They would get more comfortable with my presence each night until eventually they were eating the ripe fruit from my hands.” Pia-Paulina Guilmoth

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth is the author of At Night Gardens Grow, and Eternal Orchard also published by STANLEY/BARKER 

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