Freddy McConnell

In 2018, Freddy McConnell became a dad and shared his experience of pregnancy as a transgender man in the BIFFA-nominated BBC documentary, Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth. In 2023, Freddy is now nominated as a Top 10 Outstanding Contributor to LGBT+ Life in the British LGBT+ Awards.

Freddy holds a degree in Arabic and has spent extended periods in Yemen, Syria and the West Bank. He has travelled extensively overland, keeping online written and visual accounts of his travels. As a student, he journeyed alone overland from Delhi to Dover, via Tibet and Siberia, as well as opting to get to the Middle East by rail and sea, rather than fly. He taught skateboarding in Afghanistan before embarking on a “proper” career in journalism in 2013. He joined The Guardian with no formal journalism training and stayed on staff for six years as a multimedia news journalist, based in London and Sydney. During his time there, Freddy wrote a diverse range of articles, from the challenges of immigration on the Kent coast, to the diverse experiences of trans people, to the best Sports Documentaries and dissecting TV show reviews in the Guardian’s Token podcast.