Venus de Mars

Venus de Mars is a multidisciplinary artist and musician, best known as a singer-songwriting transgender rock star and leader of the glam-punk trans-band Venus de Mars & All the Pretty Horses. Venus came out as transgender in 1988. A time when identifying as trans meant being classified as having a mental perversion and living as an outcast. Her refusal to live a shadow existence, instead embracing her uniqueness, complicated her musical and artistic career paths. She is now mid-process in writing a memoir reflecting her thirty-year trans journey and place in this fast-changing, trans-embracing-backlashing world where we now find ourselves. Venus along with her spouse Lynette Reini-Grandell is also the subject of the award-winning rockdocumentary Venus de Mars.

If you would like to hear from her memoir, Venus also features at the literary series at the Park Theater on Thursday, August 1 at 7pm.