Morgan is a writer and maker exploring queer ecology, interspecies craft relationships, and anticapitalist economies. They have lived their entire life at the confluence of their beloved Red Cedar and Grand rivers in Lansing, Michigan, working previously as a public librarian and currently as an advocate for LGBTQIA2S+ youth. They are a founding member of Tender Heart Gardens, where they grow fiber and dye plants alongside other queer and trans growers.
Morgan began their fiber crafting work in 2002 as a knitter. Decades later, Morgan is now a largely self-taught maker of garments and practical objects, working with plant and animal fibers quite literally from the ground up using only human-powered tools, offering their creations to the community they love and writing about the process. They grow and forage plant fibers and natural dyes, process raw wool, hand-spin yarn, weave, knit, and sew.
- read Morgan's newsletter, Bodies of Land, on Substack
- purchase Queer Earth Food 3 from Combos Press
- read the essay "Living in the River" from the Lansing Undersea zine, issue 25
"What I want to tell you is that the flood is not the emergency. The flood is the river's gift: the annual lifeblood of the land where we live. River flooding is a human-created crisis, not because we have created floods, but because we have built our city where water wants to stay. When we live in the river, if we refuse to live with the river, the river will always win."
freemartin fiber workshop
Freemartin Fiber Workshop is an experimental practice in crafting for community. Under the Freemartin maker's mark, Morgan creates clothing and practical items from local plants and animals, starting with a triadic gift- giving relationship: the fiber-bearing plant or animal who gives the gift of their materials; the maker, who tends to the fiber-giver in order to make these objects; and the recipient, who is offered a physical reminder of the things we owe to each other and to the world.
Though Freemartin Fiber Workshop was initially started as a bartering practice, Morgan is now most interested in exploring economies that operate through shared responsibility, rather than explicit mutual exchange. They make things for community members who offer their own gifts, whether the recipient is Morgan themself or the community at large.
Freemartin Fiber Workshop was inspired by many individuals, communities, and species. Morgan maintains a library of books that have also inspired this project, which can be found on LibraryThing.
regarding the name
Freemartin Fiber Workshop was created after Morgan had the honor of meeting and shearing Dandelion, a Finsheep cared for first by Austin Kane of Oak Shadows Farm, and now by Taylor Hartson of Come and See farm. Dandelion is a freemartin: an intersex sheep who was assigned female at birth (to use a human term) and later developed masculinized physical and social characteristics due to elevated testosterone exposure in utero.
Morgan is not intersex, but as a similarly short, transsexual, fur-bearing creature themself, they were so moved by the experience of shearing a trans sheep alongside two queer and trans farmers, they dove headfirst into research while simultaneously processing Dandelion's beautiful fleece. Learning about the precious and valued non-reproductive social role that freemartins hold in a flock, Morgan was inspired to shift their creative practice into one that would celebrate the gifts of their transgressive siblings.
contact
write to Morgan regarding private and group fiber craft instruction, or just drop them a line here: