power in visibility: maz (they/them)

This Trans+ Awareness Week (13–19 November 2026), Not a Phase is sharing the stories of ten trans+ community members. These are people living ordinary lives across the UK. Each was given a disposable camera and asked to document a single, simple prompt: the “power” they’d want the world to recognise in them. The resulting images, alongside short interviews in participants’ own words, are below; 

Maz Hedgehog is a non-binary Black poet and writer in Manchester whose work tells trans people of colour they deserve to live happily and freely.

For me, it’s been finishing off my MA. I’ve just finished doing my MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metrapolion University. The sense of accomplishment and also the relief of getting to the end of what has been a really fun, interesting, challenging, rewarding year. It’s been really great for me actually.

So the campaign for me has been really wonderful. I felt really privileged to be part of it.  The trans community has been part of my life for a number of years, I won’t specify how many. Getting to be a non-binary, fat, black person, being visibly trans, it’s been really wonderful.  The chance to document my life a little bit, because that’s not something I normally do. I’m not a massive poster, not anymore at least. These little moments of being able to look around at my life & the things I want to share about it. It’s been really lovely.

I mean, that’s not very surprising because we are a pretty small part of the population.  I work in queer performing arts, so I spend most of my time in and around other queer people & trans people. I know intellectually, but don’t spend a tonne of time around non-queer people, so it doesn’t really directly affect me as much.  I also know that even as I walk out and about I’m not often read as trans, I’m often read as queer but I’m not perceived as trans all the time, unless I say something. The kinds of friction that would happen for lots of other, more visibility trans people, don’t happen to me and that is a privilege that I’m very aware of. What I would hope is that as I move through the world and I come out over and over again, I would hope that some of the people who don’t know a trans person, if they meet me, or any of my friends, that it would turn the needle a little bit. But also, truthly, certain people’s opinions about what trans people are, what we do, how we show up, it is only my business insofar as certain people can interfere with having visibility to live freely.

The nice, diplomatic answer to that question is that trans people truthfully just want to be able to live and afford the life they’re living,  they want to be able to get access to the medical care they need. They want to be able to use public spaces and be unremarkable. The less diplomatic answer, mind your damn business.  What trans people do, is frankly none of their business.  The fact that there is this relatively small number of foul human beings determined to ruin everyone’s day, it makes me think of the Stokely Carmichael quote, “If a white man wants to lynch me, thats his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem”. I think certain peoples opinions are only the problem for the trans community as so far as they interfere with our ability to live our lives.  For cis people, work with us, march alongside us, fight for our rights and our freedoms, absolutely. But bare minimum, mind your damn business.

For me, community is about mutual care and mutual responsibility. Community in the wider sense, we have all these people that share certain identities and experiences. But for me to consider myself in community with somebody or with a group of people, that means I have a level of responsibility towards them and they have a level of responsibility towards me. We all look after each other and we take care of each other, we show up for one another. I don’t need to be someone’s friend to consider them part of my community.  There are people in my community who maybe I don’t like, not because they’re bad people or they’ve done anything wrong, but just because our personalities don’t gel. But that’s okay, because we’re a community, not a friend group.  As for me, I’ve been living in Manchester for about 9 years now and it’s been through organisations like Rainbow Noir who run queer social events for people of colour in the city. I’ve found community through work, some of my closest friends I’ve made working on projects over the years.  Social spaces, whatsApps groups, going to fundraisers, events. I hope now I am somebody that trans people, queer people, especially trans people of colour in  Manchester know they can come to me if they need anything I have to offer, not money because I’m broke, but skills.  In exchange, I know there are places I can go and get some help if I need it.

I first realised that I was a maker, an artist, a writer, a creative when I was really little. My parents were always really big on arts and culture.  They would take us to museums, art galleries & libraries when we could afford it, we would go to the theater twice a year. My parents were always giving us books and poetry and my dad handed me Keats for the first time when I was 7 years old. From there, I started writing poetry and I’ve been writing poetry for as long as I can remember basically.  Being a writer, being a poet especially, has been part of my understanding of myself for as long as I’ve known what poetry is, so the idea that I would be anything else doesn’t quite compute with me actually.

One of the things that I think came though in the process of me documenting is the fact that my aesthetic means a lot to me.  It’s very deliberately crafted and for that i’m really inspired by fashion, style & clothing. I like creating really cohesive colour pallets, like today I’ve gone full green.  I’m creating a vibe for me that is beautiful to look at but also comfortable to be in, I don’t want to spend my day in pain.  I love stilettos, love them, but my ankles can’t handle them any more.  Then creatively, I’m really inspired by the classics.  I have a joke that only I find funny… If a poem was written in the past 100 years, I’m probably not gonna read it. I spent a lot of time with 9th century romantics, the Greek theater, Shakespeare & Marlowe, those are my real reference points.  I think there’s something really beautiful about these stories which have endured for 100’s or 1000’s of years. I’m also inspired by embodiment and with bodies, especially fat bodies, queer bodies, black bodies and how they move through the world and how existing in a body like mine, how that affects the way that I move though the world and how people like me move through the world.  Especially in my poetry, I’m really grappling with that.  I also write plays and in my plays what really inspires me is queer communities and women’s communities. How queer people navigate a world not built for us and how women navigate a world not built for them in a way that is complicated and imperfect, but following good people trying their best in imperfect situations.

Being an artist has meant that I am able to define myself for myself.  Being fat, being black, being queer and being trans there is a lot that is projected on to me, which frankly has nothing to do with me. There are certain assumptions that I have to engage with, one way or another, to be able to do the work that I do or just be able to get through the day.  In being a writer, in being vain as hell, investing in my wardrobe, my make up, in being a writer, a producer, a director I am able to define myself.  I am able to write narratives about myself in a way that is able to exist semi independently of all of these narratives that are projected onto me. If I don’t end up being consumed by wider society’s ideas of what someone like me should be like, I am able to live and be on my own terms because I am able to literally write new narratives for myself.

In terms of creating itself, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do that.  It’s always been part of my life. In terms of taking up creative space, I started doing spoken word when I was in Uni, probably freshers week a number of years ago. Getting behind a mic and reading a poem that I’d written, to an audience of people that I did not know, was really exciting and really fun. Even before that, I did youth theater in my teenage years.  I don’t know if this comes across but I have a stammer, it used to be so much worse and then doing youth theatre in my teens really helped me get over the worst of it and then doing spoken word meant that I was able to speak words that I’ve written. Doing that, loving it and doing the next thing and next and the next thing. That has, you know, really helped me realise there is room for me in the creative industries. If there isn’t already space, I can make that space. Also, you know, there have been people who have been my mentors, some of whom I’ve never met, some of whom I had never even heard of who have worked for a long time to make space for me. I hope that in the work that I do, I can help widen that space for the people, for the people coming after me as well.

The thing that I hope trans people of color, trans black people, get when they read my work is you deserve to be in this world and you deserve to live happily and freely in this world.

The degree to which that is impossible is an injustice and not a personal failure. There are so many ways of living, of surviving, of thriving. I hope that when they encounter my work or encounter me, I hope that that gives them a little bit of hope of being able to live a good life, whatever a good life looks like for them. I hope they know that they’re just that they’re not alone and that there are more of us out here and that there is a community out there waiting to welcome them if they can find us.

For me, Power is having a lot of control over my own life and so even when I’m not writing, when I’m not making, you know, when I am vegging out on my bed doomscrolling.

Power means having agency or having control over my life. It means living in a way

that I choose makes sense for me. You know, it’s taken me a long time to build the life that I have now, a life that I actually love. Probably for the first time in my life, I’m able to say that I love my life and so, you know, my best days are when I’m being an artist, but even on my worst days, when shit gets real dark, knowing that I’ve been able, with help with a community, with siblings that love me, that, I’ve been able to build a life for me that I love.

For me, that is an incredibly powerful thing, looking around like the little flat that I live in , in the neighborhood that I love, that itself is power for me. It’s just something that I would want for everyone to be able to experience. The fact that not everyone is able to is an injustice, because I don’t deserve it any more than anybody else does.

Okay, so,  If I had an unlimited budget, unlimited resources, I think there are a few classic novels that I would love to adapt for the stage. So, I would love to do an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, I would love to do The Count of Monte Cristo, I would love to do Carmilla. I have a notes app full of high in the sky ideas, but I would love to be in charge of a screen adaptation of the Discworld by Terry Pratchett. I have a whole seven season arc sketched out in my notes app, so if the Pratchett estate is watching this, hit me up, I’ve got ideas, including for an extension the Discworld for after Lord Vetinari dies and Ankh-Morpork turns to chaos. I got plans, I got ideas.

So I think that for me, power is all about having control, influence and  agency in my own life. Whether I am out being an artist, doing the things that I love, or even if I’m just like at home in my jammies, doomscrolling in my bed or, you know, flicking through YouTube, whatever it is. For me, powers about being able to live a life that I love. And, you know, this has been really hard won in a lot of ways.