The Past Is a Grotesque Animal

Tommi Parrish is an Australian trans cartoonist and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary comics and graphic novels. Balancing emotional honesty with a keen awareness of the human condition, Parrish navigates fear, loneliness, identity, body politics, queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-fluid nature of all human relationships. The Past Is A Grotesque Animal collects over two dozen short stories of varying lengths, interspersed with ephemera from Parrish’s own life: diary entries, photographs, illustrations, paintings, and more. Parrish’s autobiographical elements inform their voice as a writer, and the ways their characters constantly find one another adrift in their own seas of experience, current situations, trauma, and desire – and how those things coexist, and how they are complicated by outside forces and internal ones that affect our hardwired need for meaningful connection. The book also showcases Parrish’s