Writer

Podcaster

Speaker

Bio

Niko Stratis is a culture writer based in Toronto, Ontario by way of the Yukon where she spent close to two decades working as a journeyman glazier before coming out as a trans woman in her late 30s and being forced to abandon her previous line of work.

 As a trans woman now in her 40s, Niko provides a unique voice in cultural spaces seeking to work through lifelong traumas and emotional highs and lows through her work.

 She has twice been nominated for a digital publishing award for her personal essay work, is a team writer for queer outlet Autostraddle, and her work regularly appears in outlets like Spin magazine, Xtra and more. Her column in CatapultEveryone Is Gay, was a widely read series that explored gender and sexuality in 90s music and music criticism and its impact on her as a closeted queer and trans woman in her teen years. Her newsletter, Anxiety Shark, is a self-published weekly essay collection using music to explore her relationship to themes like gender and sobriety.

 Niko is working on her debut novel, GIRLS OF SUMMER, a punk rock novel about three friends spending a life-altering weekend at the Vans Warped Tour at a dusty Calgary speedway in 2002. The novel examines growing up isolated, lonely and desperate for a connective link to a perfect unknowable place that might tell you exactly who you were meant to be; about understanding your own transness through exposure to something so pure and perfect; queer love, desire and loss.

 She lives in Toronto with her fiancé, their dog Bowie and two cats Winona and Ramona. She is a former smoker and a cancer.

SELECTED WORK



PODCAST

A weekly podcast where we talk about the beautiful songs that we love, and the places we’ve cried listening to them in public.

Hosted by Niko Stratis