Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors

by Gabe Montesanti

A defiant yet tender memoir about drag culture and bipolar disorder that reveals the hard-earned truths of being queer in the American Midwest

In Drag Thing, Gabe Montesanti recounts her immersive entrance into St. Louis drag culture performing as Fender Bender, a drag king who ultimately transforms into a "drag thing" (a performer who defies classification altogether).

Exploring the fluidity of gender and identity through parody and honest self-exposure, Montesanti learns about binding and the art of facial hair and contouring, and she designs and constructs her own elaborate costumes with minimal budget and maximal imagination. As she clambers for success on the stage with snowballing intensity and copes with estrangement from her family of origin, she fights for her sanity—for her life—in her battle with treatment-resistant bipolar disorder, until her drag persona and her rapid cycling mania become indistinguishable from each other.

Drag Thing is a raucous, invigorating story of breakdown and self-invention, delusion and authenticity, set against a backdrop of anti-queer, anti-trans violence in which drag becomes a symbol of endangerment, glamour, and rebellion. Punctuated throughout with the author's drawings that bring "thingness" to life, Drag Thing is an anthem to the hard-won survival of a singular spirit.

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Memoir

256 pages, Paperback

Published April 21, 2026

About the author

Gabe Montesanti is a queer, Midwestern roller derby player. She earned her BA in mathematics and studio art from Kalamazoo College and her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Washington University in St. Louis. She serves as a mentor for the PEN Prison Writing Program, teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas, and has had work published in Belt Magazine, Brevity, The Offing, and Boulevard Magazine. Her piece "The Worldwide Roller Derby Convention" was recognized as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2020.

Reviews

[Debbie Char · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing to personally know that author. Gabe gives an amazingly vivid look into worlds I don't regularly inhabit.

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…it strikes me that there exists an equivalent in writing and literature. The writer or artist must be willing to sit in the unknown and embrace the unanswerable questions.”

Just a sheer delight of a memoir. Not only is Drag Thing unique in the way it brings readers close to, into the heart of, some of the alternative drag scene—though not without its forays into the more mainstream femme, pageantry world of drag—but it also wears its singularity in the 41 accompanying illustrations, which are alone worth the price of admission, and also the way Montesanti entangles queerness and liberation with the hard, unknowable, and, at times, scary parts of life. There’s a concerted effort to show readers, especially its queer audience(s), that there is a way forward, no matter if that looks/feels like grasping for anything you can hold onto because there is a community, perhaps more than one, perhaps a single person, ready to clasp your hand and be here with you. Drag Thing is here with you, and what a little blessing that is.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about love, loss, grief, new beginnings and friendships, and mental illness. Gabe explains bi-polar and the drag community so well especially for someone who didn't know much about either of those topics. This book is fascinating and well written. Now I need to go see a drag show!!