"Sometimes he transforms himself into a woman as part of a strange vision quest, aided by drugs or alcohol, to mind-meld with a female character in a book he’s writing."

Sure, that's just what it's like! Uberhighbrow uberprolific author William T. Vollmann has come out as a person who likes to cross-dress, sometimes in the middle of the night in his Sacramento writing bunker (not made up). I have not yet been able to catch up with him and his voluminous output, but I am going to need a Kickstarter to get him and Buzz Bissinger to collaborate on a fashion project.