Laurence Neal
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Laurence Neal, MFA. Laurence‘s thesis is a novel entitled What the Body Deserves.
Laurence is a trans/nonbinary writer, historian, and artist with dual master’s degrees in History and Creative Writing. Their essays in Dissent and Guernica interrogate how physical space is gendered and raced in community building and politics, and their scholarship analyzes Alt Right origins. Their short fiction was a Summer Literary Prize finalist, and their poetry will appear in Eavesdrop’s 2026 anthology. They create queer-centered poetry installations with partners like LAND, The Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The City of Los Angeles, and The City of West Hollywood.
What the Body Deserves is a fugitive roadtrip novel about the search for queer equality. Written explicitly against Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, it follows a nameless American protagonist who seeks easy rebellion but instead encounters violence and a trans awakening about the necessity of releasing toxic white masculinity on the path to true transition and liberation. An excerpt of this novel was longlisted for the 2026 Disquiet Literary Prize, whose jury “loved the emotionality threaded through this piece and the tension it creates–fear, pain, anger, and hope all welded together” and called it “a fearful, feral firecracker of a story.”
Contact
Request more information about Laurence‘s thesis project using our 2026 Graduate Showcase Contact Form.