Grace Lavery

Grace Elisabeth Lavery is an associate professor of English critical theory and gender and women's studies at UC Berkeley, whose research focuses on the history of language and aestheticism in 19th century Victorian English society, along with topics involving the language and literature of sexuality and gender.

Education
Lavery graduated under advisor Paul Saint-Amour with a English Ph.D. in 2013, with a thesis titled "Empire in a Glass Case: Japanese Beauty, British Culture, and Transnational Aestheticism".

Career
As a first publication, Lavery released Quaint, Exquisite in 2019 on a subject connected to her post-doctoral research: Victorian era sensibilities in relation to Japan as viewed through a queer theory lens. One major focus of the book is on the idea of orientalism and how that colored English understanding of Japan as the "Other Empire". A 2022 memoir titled Please Miss was her second published book and covered a wide range of topics beyond her own life and background. An introspection on being trans through a wide variety of genres and non-sequitur asides, the book psychoanalyzes the trans experience and aspects of life that represent it.

Lavery's third book, Pleasure and Efficacy, was released in 2023 and discussed the meaning of being transgender and how transitioning works in relation to how the topic is discussed in various genres of literature. The book also includes philosophical views of writers from the 19th century and how understanding of "transness" is complicated and nuanced, unlike how it can commonly be portrayed in current times. Pleasure and Efficacy was announced as a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. In 2024, Closures, her fourth book, was published on the topic of the American sitcom and its usage of heterosexuality to define the nuclear family and cause conflict and issues that reinforce the scenario. Lavery explains how the storylines in sitcoms use "external agents" to create strife that ultimately promotes the heteronormativity seen in the nuclear family value system.

She received a $125,000 advance from Substack to publish a newsletter on their platform.

Personal life
In 2018, Lavery officially began transitioning and noted in later interviews that she was happy to have done so before the publication of her first book and her bid for tenure, as it allowed her to enter the academic space with her chosen name.

Lavery married Daniel M. Lavery in 2019 and they moved from California to New York. In 2020, they formed a throuple with Lily Woodruff and they had a son in 2024.