CMD Welcomes Niko Stratis

Niko Stratis

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.

We are thrilled to welcome Niko Stratis to CookeMcDermid!

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 Catapult, EVERYONE 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 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 Nina and Ramona. She is a former smoker and a Cancer.

Niko is represented by Ron Eckel.