For the first time, this list holds more than one hundred titles—limited only by my own limitations. Still, as I wrapped up my research, I wondered if its growth would dilute its purpose. Would each entry feel less notable? Was it a form of laziness to choose inclusion over sharp curation, or to continue to take some liberties with the word debut when it comes to authors in new genres, age categories, collaborations, or art forms?
But when it comes to the voices of transgender and nonbinary people, I’m not at all interested in scarcity. Not when so much has been threatened or taken this year—rights, safety, and dignity. Not when children are being denied the chance to play games, to be called by their names, and to access life-saving care. Not when our abundance isn’t excess but proof of survival.
So this list is unwieldy on purpose. These volumes are hot with rage and ravenous with hunger. They’re satiated. Subversive. Searching. Sublime. They’re both and more; disabled, diasporic, Black, Brown, young, old, in-recovery, in translation, international, escapist, multilingual, multigenre, multimedia, and, and, and–
These books show up soft and believe themselves. They show up swinging because they know they deserve not only to play, but to win. They find just what they’re looking for, and then some. I hope this next year, reader, you do all of this too.
*Please note: Though an attempt was made to get consent from all authors to appear on this list, spam filters happen! If you’re on this list (or any other year’s) and you’d like to be removed, please contact me through my website jenstjude.com. Publishers’ blurbs have been edited for length.
Adult Fiction
Autumnal Conductor
By Lhuzie Fénix
Cybernetic Coven
Proserpina’s tenure as the Flower Painter is interrupted by the flowering of the asphodel – a drab, ugly thing that defiles her domain. In a pyrrhic victory, she defeats the invasion but is stuck in the Underworld. Surrounded by enemies, the goddess must fight across the Underworld while recruiting the army of dead kings and mortal monsters. However, the Underworld is a realm of trials – even for one such as her.
Ballads & Blades
By Jess Galaxie
Self-Published
When Chicot’s friend Lyza asks her to take her place in the popular The Pirates Three: Big, Middle, and Wee show, Chicot jumps on the opportunity without thinking. There’s just one detail that Chicot neglected: Lyza’s surly but attractive younger sister, Monty, is a major distraction. Chicot decides to push through for Lyza’s sake, even if it means she has to spend countless hours in Monty’s arms as they prepare to perform. Chicot tries to keep her crush in check, but as Monty flips from surly to flirty, Chicot thinks she’s going to melt before the season is over–and not from the heat of the sun.
Best Woman
By Rose Dommu
Ballantine Books
Julia Rosenberg loves her brother enough to be the “best woman” at his wedding. When it turns out that Kim Cameron, the gorgeous, self-assured girl that she crushed on hard in high school, is the maid of honor, Julia panics. She tells a teensy little lie to win Kim’s favor—a lie that snowballs out of control and threatens to undermine the blossoming attraction between them and complicate an already challenging relationship with her family. An utterly contemporary send-up of My Best Friend’s Wedding and a riotous coming-of-age novel, Best Woman is rife with crackling wit and devastating poignancy.
The Broposal
By Sonora Reyes
Forever
It’s about time roommates Alejandro and Kenny get married. Or at least, that’s what all their close friends and family think when they announce their engagement. The kicker? The two are faking their whole relationship so Alejandro can get a green card. But the line between fact and fiction begins to blur as the two get closer to their wedding date. With all eyes on Han and Kenny—including a meddling ex and immigration officers—will these two bros make it down the altar for real?
The Build-a-Boyfriend Project
By Mason Deaver
Avon
Eli Francis is stuck in an assistant position at the online magazine, and stuck working alongside the ex who has had no trouble moving up at work…or moving on. When his roommates push him to date so he can get over his ex once and for all, they set him up with the tall, handsome, and unbelievably awkward Peter Park. The date is a complete disaster, but when his boss overhears Eli recounting the catastrophic night, he suggests teaching Peter to be a better boyfriend through a series of simulated dates for an article. Eli plays along, but the more time Eli and Peter spend together, the closer they become–until the lines between what’s real and what’s fake begin to blur.
CRAWL
By Max Delsohn
Graywold Press
What to do when starting testosterone unlocks a newfound desire for men? How to respond when your boss’s boss asks if you’ve had “the surgery” and then requests you talk her niece out of transitioning? What obligation do you have to intervene in the faltering mental health of the baby trans drug dealer you’ve met only once while tripping on the acid he sold you? The young transmasculine characters in Crawl navigate these and other questions in the dive bars, bathhouses, parks, workplaces, music venues, beaches, and college campuses of 2010s Seattle.
Eros
By Zoe Terakes
Hachette Book Group AU
Eros is a stunning collection of short stories, grounded in truth and coloured with dazzling imagination and alluring, unpredictable mystery. Revealing how queerness, nature and myth have been intertwined for eternity, these are stories of gods and goddesses. Of Zeus, of Eurydice, of Hermaphroditus, of Icarus before he flew into the sun. Stories of queer life, lust, revenge, wrath, passion and sex. Of yearning, love, loss. Some transformations span across a life, and others, an evening. Perspectives will shift. Houses will burn. Lovers will learn their fate.
Every One Still Here
Liadan Ní Chuinn
FSG Originals
A young girl spends her days on a double-decker bus. A bride-to-be prays to St Valentine’s bones. Bouquets are found all over a museum. Teenagers gather to dissect a human body. Brimming with compassion and thrumming with energy, these stories are scrupulous in their attention to detail, epic in their scope. In this bravura debut collection, Liadan Ní Chuinn delivers a consummate blend of the personal and the political.
The Faceless Thing We Adore
By Hester Steel
Page Street Horror
Lemon, poppy seed, sun-warmed sand. These visions convince Aoife to quit her job, leave her manipulative boyfriend, and escape to the isolated shores of the Farmstead commune. There, among its charismatic and hedonistic residents, Aoife finds everything she’s been missing, but darkness underpins her airy new way of life. When Aoife’s boring old life comes crashing into her bold new one, she finds herself desperately trying to protect everyone and everything she’s grown to love.
Herculine
By Grace Byron
S&S/Saga Press
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods. The camp is secluded, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
Homegrown Magic
Jamie Pacton & Rebecca Podos
Del Rey
Margot Greenwillow—talented plant witch, tea lover, and greenhouse owner—has never felt further from adventure in her life. She’s been desperately trying to keep what remains of her family’s magic remedies business afloat. So when Yael, her childhood friend and former crush, rides back into her life, she’s shocked. Homegrown Magic is a delightful queer romantic fantasy full of friends-to-lovers chemistry, found family, rival family drama, and cozy garden magic from two acclaimed YA authors making their adult debut.
Hot Girls with Balls
Benedict Nguyễn
Catapult
Six is 6′7″, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 6′1″, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. Together, they’re going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. In between their games across the globe, Six and Green stay connected on SpaceTime and selflessly broadcast their romance to fans on their weekly Instagraph live show. Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? We’re all just desperate for a whiff of the sweaty feminine energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force. (Our interview with Benedict here!)
How Could You
Ren Strapp
Oni Press
College upperclassman Molly Song is set on getting over her ex this semester. After convincing her friend, Lou Kingston, that they should go to parties and find rebound girlfriends, Molly learns she should be careful what she wishes for. Meanwhile, Molly and Lou’s exes, Yona and Olene, have left their pasts behind as they study abroad in France. Lessons of the heart abound in How Could You, a queer debut graphic novel from Ren Strapp.
The In-Between Bookstore
By Edward Underhill
Avon
When Darby finds himself unemployed and in need of a fresh start, he moves back to the small Illinois town he left behind. But Oak Falls has changed almost as much as he has since he left. One thing is familiar: In Between Books, Darby’s refuge growing up and eventual high school job. When he walks into the bookstore now, Darby feels an eerie sense of déjà vu—everything is exactly the same. And behind the register is a teen who looks a lot like Darby did at sixteen…who just might give Darby the opportunity to change his own present for the better—if he can figure out how before his connection to the past vanishes forever.
The Influencers
By Anna-Marie McLemore
The Dial Press
“Mother May I” Iverson has spent the past twenty-five years building a massively successful influencer empire with endearing videos featuring her five mixed-race daughters. But the girls are all grown up now, and the ramifications of having their entire childhoods commodified start to spill over into public view, especially in light of the pivotal question: Who killed May’s newlywed husband and then torched her mansion to cover it up?
Leafskin
by Miranda Schmidt
Stillhouse Press
A poet and her husband have been trying to make a baby. But while undergoing fertility treatments in the midst of a harrowing wildfire season, Jo reconsiders raising a child in a time of climate crisis. When her artist ex-girlfriend, who has always had an uncanny connection to nature, re-enters her life, Jo struggles to navigate the transformations in her relationships and realities. A tale of queer love, new motherhood, and ecological interconnectedness, Leafskin interrogates how we create, and what we become, in a time of environmental devastation.
The Lilac People
By Milo Todd
Counterpoint Press
In the final days of WWII, a trans man named Bertie and his girlfriend Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him—not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies’ vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation is to flee to the United States. Brimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an unknown moment of World War II and trans history.
Luminous
By Silvia Park
Simon & Schuster
Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through a junkyard and something catches her eye: a robot boy—so lifelike and strange, unlike anything she’s ever seen before. Meanwhile, siblings Jun and Morgan haven’t spoken for years. Morgan makes robots for a living and is on the verge of losing control of her most important creation. Jun is a detective with the Robot Crimes Unit whose investigation is digging up truths that want to stay buried. Ruijie’s discovery will thrust their family back together in ways they could have never imagined.
Make Sure You Die Screaming
By Zee Carlstrom
Flatiron Books
The newly nameless narrator of Make Sure You Die Screaming has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, most likely has brain damage from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender. A call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car. An unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, gender expression, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screaming is the loud, funny, tragic, suspenseful road trip novel of our times.
Modern Divination
By Isa Agajanian
Tor
Twenty-three-year-old witch Aurelia Schwartz has always had to carefully balance her human life with her secret magical one. With a place at an elite Cambridge University college, she almost has everything she could possibly want within her grasp. Except Aurelia’s gift of green magic has begun to fade. Worse still, someone is hunting witches – and stealing their powers.
Moonflow
By Bitter Karella
Run For It
They call it the King’s Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. Sarah is a trans woman who makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King’s Breakfast has her journeying into vast uncharted woods. But as she descends deeper, she realizes she’s not alone. Something in the forest is waking up. It’s hungry—and it wants her.
Motheater
By Linda H. Codega
Erewhon Books
After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman called Motheater in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it’s right—but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs.
Necessary Fiction
By Eloghosa Osunde
Riverhead Books
In Necessary Fiction, Eloghosa Osunde explores the paths and dreams, hopes and fears of more than two dozen characters who are staking out lives for themselves in contemporary Nigeria. Osunde’s characters seek out love for self and their chosen partners, even as they risk ruining relationships with parents, spouses, family, and friends. As they work to establish themselves in the city’s lively worlds of art, music, entertainment, and creative commerce, we meet their collective and individual attempts to reckon with the necessary fiction they carry for survival.
Once Upon a Punk Show
By Katelyn Forrest
401 Kf
For Giulia Caesari, a small-time punk singer chasing a stage high, embracing the chaos of her life is a night in the mosh pit. Until she learns chaos is not an abstract thing. Chaos is a flesh and blood being trailing a universe of magic and danger in her wake. Eris, Greek goddess of chaos, is dodging a German thunder god turned zealot when she is drawn to the flame of Giulia’s musical chaos. Backstage, the goddess and the rocker begin a journey that will remold Giulia’s understanding of a world that thinks gods are dead and gone.
Realistic Fiction
By Anton Solomonik
LittlePuss Press
Realistic Fiction is definitely not a deeply felt collection of transsexual short stories, engaged in dissident metaphysical investigation of the normative tenets of gender in our society! Bro, how could you say that? It is very dramatic and exciting, yes, but it is not metaphysical at all. As if Charlie Chaplin re-wrote the works of Kafka, and he was a Russian trans man, Anton Solomonik brings a funny, heartbreaking, and startlingly unique new voice to contemporary short fiction.
A Rotten Girl
By J. Ursula Topaz
Self-published
Pearl is a trans woman writer on the cusp of literary greatness…or so she thought until her agent informs her that her first book has sunken like a stone. Jaded from the knowledge that this industry rarely lets in people like her, Pearl comes up with a plan: write a commercial male/male romance. A Rotten Girl is a satirical drama that explores gender, public personas, the commodification of queerness—and the reality of what it is like to be a trans woman in a hostile world.
Single Player
By Tara Tai
Alcove Press
Cat Li cares about two things: video games and swoony romances. When she lands her dream job writing the love storylines for Compass Hollow—the next big thing in games—she knows it’s all been worth it. Then she meets her boss: the infamous Andi Zhang, who’s not only an arrogant hater of happily-ever-afters determined to keep Cat from doing her job but also impossibly, annoyingly hot. But when Cat uncovers a behind-the-scenes plot to destroy Andi’s career, the two will have to put their differences aside and find a way to work together before it’s game over.
Songs of No Provenance
By Lydi Conklin
Catapult
Songs of No Provenance tells the story of Joan Vole, an indie folk singer forever teetering on the edge of fame, who flees New York after committing a shocking sexual act onstage that she fears will doom her career. Joan seeks refuge at a writing camp for teenagers in rural Virginia, where she’s forced to question her own toxic relationship to artmaking—and her complicated history with a friend and mentee—while finding new hope in her students and a deepening intimacy with a nonbinary artist and fellow camp staff member.
Stag Dance
By Torrey Peters
Random House
In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing. Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.
Sunset Year
By C.J. Ellison
Self-published
A novella following the friendship of a trans college hockey player, experiencing suicidal thoughts after a season-ending injury, and a music student, grappling with the sudden death of her sister, as they form a bond, a bond only renewed each night at sunset.
Sweet Revenge / Echoes in the Dark
R. Evans
Self-Published
Roman is the groundskeeper of the cemetery, something they love because of the simplicity of the job. They prefer the silence of working alone, and dread the day they have to run the family cemetery and funeral home. But when a mysterious figure appears with orders for Roman to keep the business in their family, they have to decide which choice will unsettle their reality and unbury things that should be laid to rest.
Terry Dactyl
By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Coffee House Press
Terry Dactyl has lived many lives. Raised by boisterous lesbian mothers in Seattle, she comes of age as a trans girl in the 1980s in a world of dancing queens and late-night house parties just as the AIDS crisis ravages their world. Twenty years later, in a panic during the COVID-19 lockdown, Terry returns home to a Seattle stifled by gentrification and pandemic isolation until resistance erupts following the murder of George Floyd, and her search for community ignites once again. In propulsive, intoxicating prose, Terry Dactyl delivers a vital portrait of queer identity in all its peril and possibility.
This Love
By Lotte Jeffs
Harper Perennial
When Mae and Ari meet outside a crowded gay bar during their final year of university, their connection is instant, sparking a lifetime friendship. Though they are young, ambitious, and queer, both Mae and Ari secretly daydream about settling down somewhere with a garden, children, and dogs, building a life that feels like home. They make a pact: somehow, some day, they will have a child together. Although nothing goes quite to plan, Ari and Mae—alongside their dearest friends and lovers—come to realize that the messy, devoted, tight-knit family they could build together might be better than anything they could have ever imagined.
What a Fish Looks Like
By Syr Hayati Beker
Stelliform Press
In ten days, the last spaceship is leaving for a new planet. Some of us will stay on Earth. How do we decide? Told in margin notes, posters, letters scrawled on napkins, and six retellings of classic fairy tales, What A Fish Looks Like gathers the stories of a queer community co-creating one another through the strange landscapes of climate change, wondering who is going to love us when there are not, in fact, plenty of fish in the sea.
When the Harvest Comes
By Denne Michele Norris
Random House
The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness. But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has been in a terrible car accident, he must revisit everything that went wrong between them, risking his fledgling marriage along the way.
Where the Stars Are
By Micah Flowers
Self-published
Masika Holt made peace with never seeing her best friend–and ex-lover–ever again. She betrayed him, after all. But a change of heart puts her right on Aiden Zetrenne’s doorstep with hopes of atonement. Despite her mistakes, he accepts the apology with open arms and allows her to stay in his home. With danger and oppressors lurking at every corner, with Evil stalking their every step, will the couple make it out alive without getting more blood on their hands?
Whites
By Mark Doten
Graywolf Press
The excoriating stories in Mark Doten’s brilliant first collection dissect the pathological narratives that shape our culture and country. Narrated by a crosscutting array of White people, Doten’s stories spotlight the self-serving logic through which their characters struggle to make sense of, and take control of, the narrative of our time. While their identities and allegiances differ, all of them are united by a ferocious belief in themselves, certain that everything they’ve done can be justified, if you’ll just hear them out.
Woodworking
By Emily St. James
Crooked Media Reads
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she’s told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn’t exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit. Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. As the unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community. And soon, both women—and those closest to them—are forced to ask: Who are we if we choose to hide ourselves? What happens once we disappear into the woodwork?
You Are Not Your Bones and Lesser Misfortunes
By Alice Scott
Kith Books
Two scientists plan a coffee date with decidedly mixed results. A precocious young man turns to forbidden magic to medicate his chronic illness. One resurrection man contends with the most important body of all. YOU ARE NOT YOUR BONES and Lesser Misfortunes is a collection of Alice Scott’s first seven short stories, originally published in various magazines and anthologies.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human
By Andrew Joseph White
S&S/Saga Press
Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.
Multi-genre/Mixed Media
Chrysalis
By Trans Youth, For Trans Youth
Chrysalis is a literary magazine by trans youth, for trans youth (created with a little help from trans adults)–and their first issue printed this year. These days, it feels like we are always hearing about trans kids and teens. Chrysalis was created so that trans, non-binary, intersex, genderqueer, agender, two-spirit, and otherwise gender expansive youth can speak for themselves – and most importantly, speak to one another.
Gendertrash From Hell
Edited by Mirha-Soleil Ross
LittlePuss Press
In 1993, Mirha Soleil-Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay, fed up with a gay scene that rejected trans people and a trans scene that saw no alternative to going “stealth,” began to publish the zineGendertrash From Hell. Over four issues, they interviewed sex workers and prisoners; they printed collages, soap operas and polemics; they ran regular sections with titles like “Trannies Speak Out” and “Hooker of the Month”. They redefined transsexual culture forever, and their explosive ideas resonate deeply today. Remastered from the original layouts, this foundational work is now available in book form for the first time.
Lilac Peril
Edited by Luke Sutherland & Andrea Morgan
When the fact of our existence is taboo, what do trans people still not want to talk about, even amongst ourselves? 30+ trans writers and artists gesture towards this question in Lilac Peril Issue 01: Taboo, taking a hard look at what we would often rather ignore. There are all the ways we reproduce the hurts of the world onto each other: racism, misogyny, ableism, whore- and fatphobia. There’s kink and fetish and how we sanitize sex from ourselves. There are hot takes turned serious—Is our deep-set identification with children’s media holding us back? Can T4T actually solve the problem of relating to others? Could sissy hypno be hopeful?
The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam
By Lana Lin
Dorothy, a publishing project
In her 1933 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein invented a new literary form by narrating her own story from the perspective of her partner, blurring the lines between portrait and self-portrait. Situated between memoir, social criticism, and conceptual art, The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam is an incisive response to a modernist classic and an affecting exploration of the poetics and politics of our times. At heart a candid chronicle of her partner Lan Thao’s life journey from Việt Nam during the war, and her own troubled history as a gender-queer Taiwanese American, Lin weaves an intimate landscape of living that is also a critical investigation of race and gender.
The Trans Mag
By trans people, for trans people
Trans Mag is a consistently printed, all-Trans magazine dedicated to preserving and documenting trans art, life, culture, and creation–and their first two issues printed this year. The goal of Trans Mag is to produce as much archival Trans media as possible while supporting all of the artists who create it. Every purchase of the Trans Mag goes to directly supporting the trans community.
Transtraterrestrial: Dark Matter and Black Divinities
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Wesleyan University Press
Transtraterrestrial is an experimental book that documents Sage Ni’Ja Whitson’s groundbreaking performance pieces, blending African Diasporic practices with innovative methodologies to explore themes of gender, sexuality, race, and spirit. Divided into two parts—The Unarrival Experiments and Counterproposals—the work delves into the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, and Blackness through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens.
Weaving Liberation
MK Thekkumkattil
Adobe Press
Weaving Liberation: An Archival Chapbook is a hybrid chapbook that documents one year of refusing genocide against Palestinians. This collection offers an archive and genuflection to the communities that have come together for Palestinian liberation. Situated in the specificity of Dena’ina Land, the chapbook’s ephemera includes ceremonial scripts from actions, letters to an assembly member, and essays written in grief, rage, and desperation.
Nonfiction
Aggregated Discontent
By Harron Walker
Penguin Random House
In sixteen essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Harron Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. With razor-sharp, biting prose that’s as uncompromising as it is playful, Walker grapples with questions of love, sex, fertility, labor, embodiment, community, autonomy, and body fluids from her particular vantagepoint: often at the margins, conditionally at the center.
Antiboy
Valentijn Hoogencamp translated by Michele Hutchinson
The University of Chicago Press
When Valentijn must undergo a mastectomy because of a gene defect, he makes the decision not to have implants and adopts an in-between gender identity that feels more natural. But all of this causes friction: not only are Valentijn’s doctors stumped, but friends, family, and lovers too. A refined, poetic autobiographical essay about adopting a new and truer identity, Antiboy goes beyond the author’s own journey, becoming a nuanced exploration of human connections amid transformation.
Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History
By Eli Erlick
Beacon Press
Highlighting influential individuals from 1850–1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term. Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.
Beyond Personhood
Talia Mae Bettcher
University of Minnesota Press
Beyond Personhood offers an intersectional trans feminism that illuminates transphobic, sexist, heterosexist, and racist oppressions, situating trans oppression and resistance within a much larger decolonial struggle. By refusing to separate theory from its application, Bettcher shows how a philosophy of depth can emerge from the everyday experiences of trans people, pointing the way to a reinvigoration of philosophy.
Get it Out
By Andrea Becker
New York University Press
At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Get It Out weaves centuries of medical history with rich qualitative data from 100 women, trans men, and nonbinary people who had, want, or are considering hysterectomy. It interrogates how little choice people with uteruses ultimately have over their reproductive health, and explores what these “choices” signify amid interlocking systems of inequality.
How to Fuck Like a Girl
Vera Blossom
DOPAMINE/Semiotext(e)
A bold and vulnerable collection from a new, young voice, How to Fuck Like a Girl is a daring mash-up of pillow book, grimoire, and manifesto by writer Vera Blossom. From hooking up to trans witchcraft, petty crime, capitalism, friendships, divorce, and survival, Blossom brings wit and melancholy, grandeur and smarts, debuting a bright literary voice as raunchy as it is heartfelt.
Marsha
By Tourmaline
Tiny Reparations Books
“Thank god the revolution has begun, honey.” Rumor has it that after Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she picked up a shard of broken mirror to fix her makeup. Marsha, a legendary Black transgender activist, embodied both the beauty and the struggle of the early gay rights movement. Her work sparked the progress we see today, yet there has never been a definitive record of her life. Until now. Written with sparkling prose, Tourmaline’s richly researched biography Marsha finally brings this iconic figure to life, in full color.
Maybe This Will Save Me
Tommy Dorfman
Hanover Square Press
For years, Tommy Dorfman turned her back on her thoughts and emotions, hoping they’d simply go away. She sought guidance in a tarot deck, and through that first pull, found the seeds of her stories. Through this book, she explores the turbulent years she spent as a teenager, numbed by drugs and alcohol. She revisits her early aspirations of stardom and the hard fought path she forged to get her breakout role in 13 Reason Why, her treatment for addiction, and the relationships that shaped her. Maybe This Will Save Me is a luminously written, bracingly honest, and structurally audacious memoir of an artist whose vision transcends mediums.
No Offense
By Jackie Domenus
ELJ Editions
When Jackie “came out” in 2014, right as the Trump era was revving up, she began paying closer attention to the inappropriate questions, uncomfortable reactions, and pointed assumptions about sexuality and gender she was witnessing and now experiencing firsthand. No Offense: A Memoir in Essays takes a magnifying glass to subtle moments that many people don’t recognize as homophobic or transphobic, exploring the impact of microaggressions on LGBTQ+ folks.
Paper Doll
Dylan Mulvaney
Harry N. Abrams
In Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, Dylan pulls back the curtain of her “It Girl” lifestyle with a witty and intimate reflection of her life pre- and post-transition. She covers everything from her first big break in theater to the first time her dad recognized her as a girl to how she handled scandals, cancellations, and tucking. It’s both laugh-out-loud funny and powerfully honest–and is a love letter to everyone who stands up for queer joy.
So Many Stars
Caro de Robertis
Algonquin Books
So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers. De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life.
The Dad Rock that Made Me a Woman
Niko Stratis
University of Texas Press
When Wilco’s 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was infamously criticized as “dad rock,” Niko Stratis was a twenty-five-year-old closeted trans woman working in her dad’s glass shop in the Yukon Territory. As she sought escape from her hypermasculine environment, Stratis found an unlikely lifeline amid dad rock’s emotionally open and honest music. Listening to dad rock, Stratis could access worlds beyond her own and imagine a path forward. In taut, searing essays rendered in propulsive and unguarded prose, Stratis delves into the emotional core of bands like Wilco and The National, telling her story through the dad rock that accompanied her along the way.
sorry i keep crying during sex
By Jesse James Rose
Harry N. Abrams
Following the aftermath of an assault, and the heartache of caring for a grandfather with Alzheimer’s, sorry i keep crying during sex tells a captivating story of identity, recovery, grief, survivorship, and transness. Through lists, theatrical scripts, flashbacks, and Grindr DMs, Jesse James Rose’s genre-defying memoir is raw and hysterically funny, and takes readers on the wild ride of overcoming the struggles of a trans twentysomething.
So What If I’m a Puta
By Amara Moira
Feminist Press
In So What If I’m a Puta, Amara Moira’s crônicas wryly portray her experiences as a trans sex worker in Brazil. In a brazen, funny, and at times heartbreaking voice, Moira explores the political and personal textures of her encounters with the men who buy sex from her, and the complex reality of her labor of a sort of love. Ultimately, Moira writes to center trans sex workers in Brazil’s putafeminist movement, modeling a feminism that envisions inclusivity, safety, self-determination, and joy for us all.
Trans/Rad/Fem
By Talia Bhatt
Self-published
This series of essays aims to reconstruct and reintroduce the radical feminist framework that its misbegotten inheritors seem determined to forget and in doing so boldly makes the claim that transfeminism, far from being antagonistic to radical feminism, is in fact its direct descendant.
Transanything
Ever Jones
Curbstone Press
Transanything reveals a world in metamorphosis. A hermit crab retires its shell, lovers drift apart, and seasons churn, all amid Ever Jones’s own narrative of midlife gender transition. Jones takes up a tradition of writing—about the American landscape, solitude, wilderness, and the West—long intertwined with colonialism and heteropatriarchy, and makes it wholly their own.
Uncanny Valley Girls
Zefyr Lisowski
Harper Perennial
At twenty-seven, poet Zefyr Lisowski found herself in the place she feared most: a locked psych ward. While inside, she turned to horror movies—her deepest, most constant comfort. In these wide-ranging essays, Lisowski weaves theory and memoir into nuanced critiques of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Saint Maud. Deeply felt, blood-spattered, and brimming with care and wonder, Uncanny Valley Girls thrusts this seasoned poet to centerstage.
Worthy of the Event
By Vivian Blaxell
LittlePuss Press
Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s, Vivian Blaxell takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history. In seven devastatingly intelligent parts, her essay covers a vast range in time and space — from the arson of a Japanese temple to a transformative encounter with a coral reef, from Nietzsche and Hegel to Indigenous metaphysics, from a perplexing relationship with a beautiful man to the unknowable minds of animals. Fleshy and philosophical, Worthy of the Event belatedly establishes Vivian Blaxell as one of the major writers of her generation.
Poetry
A Congregation of Alligators
By Grayson Thompson
Write Bloody Publishing
A two-lane Florida roadway opened in 1968. Now a superhighway, Alligator Alley, quickly became a dangerous place for tired people driving to (or from) the outline of home. A reckoning of which came first, the person or the dinosaur, straddling becoming. Grayson arrived to this book at the collision, and meant every word. Found each answer at the corner of rebellion and tenderness. Was afraid of the dark the entire time and still is. A self-described sand-bodied Florida boy, A Congregation of Alligators explores what happens when the stories we’ve been told about ourselves, as old as the beginning and taught to us so true that they feel prehistoric, were put to rest.
Dead Girl Cameo
By m. mick powell
Penguin Random House
In m. mick powell’s polyphonic, haunting debut, a chorus of voices conjures up intimate pop herstories to map how the poet’s queer Black girlhood was molded by their memory. With tender reverence, powell meditates on the deaths of her own beloveds while reflecting on the many stages of an icon’s life. Through sensual imagery, speculative verse, and splendid wordplay, Dead Girl Cameo takes us beyond the headlines, innovating a Black feminist poetic that traverses the richly textured realms of grief, girlhood, love, widowing, femme friendship, and queer fandom.
an everyday occurence
By Hailey M. Tran
Button Poetry
Hailey M. Tran’s chapbook, an everyday occurrence, is raw and biting. Layered with conversations on the intersections of gender, and race, Tran reflects on existing in a femme body with wit and sharp honesty. These poems break the body down from varying voices—the media, the corporate environment, social scenes, and cultural spaces. an everyday occurrence is an autopsy of the systems that perpetuate violence against women and femmes, from objectification to the continued harassment and assault of femme bodies.
florida, i love you violent
By Simran Chugani
Bottlecap Press
florida, i love you violent is a love letter to the communities that hold resistance and joy in the same breath. These poems speak to and from the margins – where transgender communities organize, where immigrant communities celebrate, where history is carried and resisted in the body. Through a collage of poetic styles and voices, Chugani captures a story of Florida that defies headlines and stereotypes: one that is unapologetically queer, fiercely diverse, and deeply beautiful.
Hardly Creatures
By Rob Macaisa Colgate
Tin House
Brilliant and innovative (and the winner of the 2025 CHIRBy Award for Poetry!) Rob Macaisa Colgate’s debut poetry collection, Hardly Creatures, takes the form—visually and metaphorically—of an accessible art museum. Through nine sections that act as gallery rooms, the book shepherds the reader through the radiance and mess of the disability community.
Interlocutor Goddess
By Jasmine Reid
Autumn House Press
Interlocutor Goddess explores the creation of a trans language for selfhood within an exilic state of “ecstatic grief.” Reid’s experimental work challenges societal norms, particularly the family as a political construct while reflecting on the trans experiences of a queer Black woman. The poems grapple with oppressive systems of separation and colonial legacies, rejecting extractive, empire-driven paradigms, and gender essentialism.
Let the Moon Wobble
By Ally Ang
Alice James Book
In poems born of intense loneliness, grief, anger, and uncertainty at a convergence of apocalypses: a raging pandemic, a worsening climate crisis, and numerous global uprisings, Ally Ang’s Let the Moon Wobble asks and seeks to answer the question: What makes the end of the world worth surviving? These poems ache for connection and lineage in a time of unrelenting isolation, plumbing the depths of grief and rage against the systems and institutions that aim to repress and kill queer people of color.
Phases
Tramaine Suubi
Amistad
Both intimate and intricately structured, Tramaine Suubi’s remarkable work is inspired by the moon—its phases’ effects on water, the Earth, and our bodies. Phases relishes in the beauty of change, even that caused by heartbreak. Suubi’s refreshing, vulnerable verse begs to be underlined, memorized, and shared; each of her poems operate as love letters to the cyclical healing that occurs in nature, in our bodies, and in the bodies that have come before us.
Sand Bodied Florida Boy
By Grayson Thompson
Foglifter
Sand Bodied Florida Boy is a love song to the first moment you felt believed in, when hope wasn’t a question, but an answer in every breath you chose to take. This collection explores the reimagination of his boyhood, something Thompson did not socially or biologically receive as a Black trans person, and how he grew to make sense of who he would become. It speaks to being an immigrant possibility dream for his Jamaican mother, who has never run from a hurricane but wonders every year about the sandbags, and how he began creating grace out of his name.
Scream / Queen
By CD Eskilson
Acre Books
Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson’s debut poetry collection, examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity through the lens of thrillers and B movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Michael Myers, and the Headless Horseman are just a few of the fright-film villains and monsters that populate this book. Though an atmosphere of trans panic and state legislation against trans bodies pervades the book, Scream / Queen ultimately conjures a world of hope and tenderness through connection and care.
Still My Father’s Son
By Nora Hikari
Sundress Publications
Still My Father’s Son by Nora Hikari weaves a complex & delicate tale of love, religious trauma, queerness, and self/selves. A devastating intimacy surrounds this collection, omnipresent in moments where language is sharp enough to cut. Hikari’s work is an exploration into self-love at its most fractured and literal, and a beautiful homage to what it means to heal from/with/by deep-rooted pain.
The Language of Unbreaking
By Keana Aguila Labra
Sampaguita Press
The Language of Unbreaking by Keana Aguila Labra offers a deeply personal exploration of the author’s memories, ranging from reflections on family and self to broader themes of connection.Through the seamless blend of Cebuano and Tagalog, Labra crafts poems that weave together vibrant, delicate recollections, sometimes anchoring them in physical artifacts that hold profound emotional weight.
the past is a jean jacket
By Cloud Delfina Cardona
Hub City Press
Reminiscent of being in a heavily postered room with rock music blasting, Cloud Delfina Cardona’s debut collection the past is a jean jacket is a time capsule of a 90s queer, Latinx teenhood. Cardona’s speaker explores their gender through sex and relationships, searches for belonging in their family lineage, and copes with depression using movies, indie bands, cigarettes, and Tumblr.
the space between men
By Mia S. Willis
Penguin Books
These piercing, surprising poems look to familial history, rituals of faith, and the natural world to explore how the intersecting cultures of Blackness and queerness relate to each other. Readers are challenged and empowered to seek expansiveness in spaces that have not previously been excavated, reckon with the complexities of interpersonal relationships, and explore memory as a catalyst for self-determination. Mia S. Willis weaves together intergenerational knowledge and personal discovery—not only to define themselves but to articulate a communal identity that transcends language.
We Had Mansions
By Mandy Shunnarah
Diode Editions
In the spirit of documentary poetics, We Had Mansions is a luminous and unflinching debut by queer Palestinian Appalachian poet and journalist Mandy Shunnarah. Blending archival research with lived experience, Shunnarah composes poems that bear witness to the fractured geographies of diaspora, the disinformation campaigns that erase Palestinian humanity, and the personal and collective grief that is carried across generations.
Wild/Hurt
By Meg Ford
Button Poetry
Wild/Hurt by Meg Ford takes the abstract ‘journey’ of trauma recovery and makes it concrete with interactive poetics. The reader is immersed in multiple paths that mirror the choices, experiences, and struggles one makes when reclaiming themselves in the face of sexual abuse. While being intensely personal, Wild/Hurt moves resonantly through memory and healing in a way that can speak to many survivors.
Young Adult
All I Know So Far
By Nicole Zelniker
Inked in Gray LLC
Of course Avery Marsh’s parents decide to divorce her senior year of high school, but what’s way worse, they’re shipping Avery across the country to spend the year with her extremely closeted, absentee half-brother Lucas and his secret boyfriend. Avery has to spend their last year of school in Middle-of-Nowhere, Virginia, navigating new classes, explaining their pronouns to the cute boy in math class, and making new friends. Told in journal entries, All I Know So Far is a queer coming of age story about love, hope, and resilience.
Between the Walls
By Caspian Faye
Tiny Ghost Press
When James Thorne and his recently divorced dad move into their new house, James can’t help thinking about all he’s left behind. But when his presence awakens Nathaniel, the ghost of a seventeen-year-old trans boy who has haunted the walls of this house since the 1700s, things take a surprising turn. Nathaniel and James hit it off, an easy connection that could become something more. But only if they survive.
Devils Like Us
By L.T. Thompson
Bloomsbury YA
Our Flag Means Death meets The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue in this YA historical fantasy about three teens and their found family of queer pirates facing down a secret magical society. Remy wants to rescue her father. Cas wants to finally be himself. Finn wants to get the girl. When a prophetic vision sets the three of them on a collision course, they embark on a journey that will take them aboard a ship of queer smugglers, into the path of a demon, and inside a sinister stronghold of dark magic.
Donut Summer
By Anita Kelly
Quill Tree Books
“Relaxing” and “getting a tan” may be on most teens’ summer to-do lists, but for chronically freckled and deeply anxious Penny Dexter? Not a chance. At least she can sock away tuition money with the seasonal gig she landed at Delicious Donuts. But when she finds out that her genderqueer nemesis, Mateo della Penna, will also be working behind the counter, Penny’s summer of mindless labor instantly vanishes before her eyes. Could it be that Penny’s found the perfect, most infuriating person to change the world with?
Hollow
By Taylor Grothe
Penguin Random House
After a meltdown in her school cafeteria prompts an unwanted autism diagnosis, Cassie Davis moves back to her hometown in upstate New York. Cassie’s never truly felt normal anywhere, but she does crave the ease she used to have with her old friends, who invite her on a backpacking trip to the upper reaches of the Adirondacks. But when a fight breaks out their first night, Cassie wakes to a barren campsite—her friends all gone. Are the dangers in the forest, on the trail, or in the Roost itself?
Let Them Stare
By Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy
Storytide
Sully is ready to get out of Hearst, Pennsylvania, but when their fashion internship goes up in smoke, they’re trapped in Hearst with no cash—and no car. Maybe Sully can still move to the city if they can authenticate a vintage designer bag they found at their favorite thrift store, but when they begin to investigate, Sully finds themself haunted by the ghost of Rufus, a drag performer from the fifties. With Rufus in tow, Sully tries to sell the bag, and delves into the history of the town they’re so desperate to escape–only to discover that there might be more to Hearst than they ever knew.
Listen Closely
By Leon Egan
HarperCollins GB
When Jude and Aiden are paired up together for an internship at a local radio station, things are awkward. Jude is quiet, withdrawn, has one friend, and is suspicious of everyone. Aiden is charming, outgoing, and popular, with a seemingly easy confidence and golden retriever energy. But after they discover a shared love of podcast dramas, Jude and Aiden realise that they have more in common than they first realised.
Love, Misha
By Aksel Aden
First Second
Can this road trip get any worse? Yes, Mom (Audrey) wanted to spend time with Misha. But Audrey still thinks of Misha as her daughter, despite Misha being non-binary and trying to talk to her openly about it. Then a wrong turn down a forest road leads the mother-child duo straight into the Realm of Spirits! Can Misha and Audrey work together to find their way back home and back to each other?
Low Orbit
By Kazimir Lee
Top Shelf Productions
Fifteen-year-old Azar feels stuck. Her mom’s job forced them to move to Vermont, where Azar doesn’t know anyone. Her only friends are the next-door neighbors: an aging sci-fi writer and his nonbinary teen, Tristan, fellow misfits in the small-town community. For a while, Azar can escape her troubles by disappearing into the pages of her kindly neighbor’s epic novel, The Exiles of Overworld. But when her queerness throws her life out of balance, Azar realizes some secrets can’t be escaped forever.
One of the Boys
By Victoria Zeller
Levine Querido
Grace Woodhouse has left a lot behind. She used to have a great friend group, an amazing girlfriend, and a right foot set to earn her a Division I football scholarship—before she came out as trans. As senior year begins, Grace struggles to find her place in early transition, new social circles, and a life without football. But when her skills as the best kicker in the state prove to be vital, her old teammates beg her to come out of retirement, dragging her back into a sport—into a way of life—she thought had turned its back on her forever.
Pride or Die
By CL Montblanc
Wednesday Books
Seventeen-year-old Eleanora Finkel just wants to finish her senior year and get the hell out of Texas. But when her LGBTQ+ club meeting inconveniently coincides with an attack on the school’s head cheerleader, she and her friends find themselves in the hot seat. In order to clear their names and ensure the survival of their club for future queer teens, they’ll have to track down the real culprit themselves.
Shampoo Unicorn
By Sawyer Lovett
Hyperion
Brian is into Drag Race, Dolly Parton, and his gig as one of the mystery hosts of his podcast, Shampoo Unicorn. Greg’s life should be perfect as the town’s super-masc football star, but his secret? He’s just as gay as Brian. Leslie is a trans girl living in nearby Pennsylvania, searching for reasons to get out of bed every day. When a terrible accident occurs, it’s Shampoo Unicorn that brings the three teens’ lives together. What begins as a search for answers becomes a story of finding connection.
Star Fruit
By Kamryn Kingsberry
Ikb Press
When the student theater committee rejects yet another one of Ari’s queer PGM (people of the global majority) scripts, Ya–Ari’s best friend and Atlas’s cousin–takes matters into her own hands and convinces their principal to put on the play anyway. The only condition is that they’ll have to fund the production themselves. Following Ya’s lead, Ari and Atlas reluctantly agree to take on a project that feels unconquerable. As the three race against the clock to gather the cast, crew, and funds, their friendships are tested when new relationships, jealousy, and resentment threaten to tear apart their lifelong bond.
The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends
By Jamie D’Amato
Wednesday Books
It’s only natural nineteen-year-old Brennan’s life would be upended by something as ridiculous and unexpected as turning into a vampire. But Brennan’s newly bloodthirsty existence gets way more complicated when Cole, the super cute librarian and everyone’s campus crush, stumbles on Brennan drinking from a stolen blood bag. Luckily, adorable Cole is happy to keep Brennan’s secret, and even seems to maybe like him? With swirling rumors of a missing student and a rise in strange “animal attacks” near campus, Brennan must uncover the secrets of the clan and figure out how to balance vampirism and humanity, or risk losing the first real friends he’s ever had.
There’s Always Next Year
By George Johnson and Leah Johnson
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (BYR)
On New Year’s Eve, Andy puked on her crush, dropped her phone in a fish tank, and managed to get her car stolen. Dominique is an influencer on the verge of securing a major brand deal that will ensure his future and family legacy. There’s Always Next Year is a dual POV, double love story about what it means to nearly blow your life up, and race to put it back together before your time runs out. And if Andy and Dominique fail? Well, there’s always next year.
This Is the Year
By Gloria Muñoz
Holiday House
In this gorgeous, poetic YA debut, seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed Goth and aspiring writer Julieta Villarreal is grieving her twin sister who died in a hit-and-run. Then, Juli is recruited by Cometa, a private space program enlisting high-aptitude New American teens for a high-stakes mission to establish humanity’s first extraterrestrial settlement. As her world collapses from the ramifications of the climate crisis, Juli must decide if she’ll carry her loss together with her community or leave it all behind.
Vesuvius
By Cass Biehn
Penguin Random House
This thrilling historical fantasy set days before Mount Vesuvius destroys Pompeii is a meet cute with an explosive fallout. An exploration of ambition and class, autonomy and religion, survival and love, Vesuvius combines the romantic angst of They Both Die at the End and the blended magic and history of The Song of Achilles to show readers that it is never too late to change your fate—or change the world.
Wavelength
By Cale Plett
Groundwood Books
Seventeen-year-old pop sensation Sasha may be famous, but they’ve always kept a layer of anonymity by covering their face to perform. Facing pressure to unmask, Sasha runs away to a nowhere midwestern city, planning to finish senior year and come out as nonbinary away from the limelight. But their plan falters from the moment they meet Wavelength, an alt-rock band, and their lead singer, Lillian, who is struggling to keep the band together. Maybe Sasha is the new singer and the new love Lillian’s looking for — even though Sasha’s stories don’t seem to quite add up.
Middle Grade & Kidlit
Beyond They/Them
Em Dickson, illustrated by Cameron Mukwa
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Explore 20 biographies of game-changing and noteworthy nonbinary people of diverse backgrounds and in a wide variety of industries. Beyond They/Them: 20 Influential Nonbinary People You Should Know is a fully illustrated guide to celebrities, activists, musicians, and other influential people of various identities across the nonbinary spectrum. Complete with beautiful illustrations by the talented artist Cameron Mukwa and written by Em Dickson, this book is a celebration of nonbinary joy and proves that there has been, and always will be, a place for people of all genders.
Call Me Gray
By Bells Larsen, Andrew Larsen, and illustrated by Tallulah Fontaine
Kids Can Press
This personal story, co-written by acclaimed author Andrew Larsen and his son Bells, is inspired by Bells’s own experience as a transgender person. It’s about the joy and comfort a child feels when a parent affirms their identity, and how the transition can be complex for the rest of the family. An excellent conversation starter for families with a child who might be questioning their gender identity, it centers the child’s experience of navigating and sharing what they feel, and shows that, though the child’s sense of themself is changing, their place in the family is not.
Dirk Jones is NOT the Chosen One
By Gatlin Perrin
Firefly Press
Dirk isn’t the chosen one. Not even close. So how did they end up in the middle of a potential apocalypse? All Dirk wanted was to escape another argument with their parents and go for a nice quiet coffee. Instead, they’ve been kidnapped by agents and attacked by mal-realmers. Both sides need the chosen one. But there’s not a lot Dirk can do about it…is there?
Glitch Girl!
By Rainie Oet
Kokila
J—’s life is consumed by the roller coaster video game Coaster Boss, and by the power she exerts over the pixelated theme park attendees. Her life outside the game, however, is less controllable.She’s navigating ADHD, the loneliness of middle school, and an overwhelming crush on a girl named Junie. Glitch Girl! follows J— from fifth to seventh grade, from the beginning to the end of her obsession with Coaster Boss, and to the start of a new friendship. When J— meets Sam, a nonbinary classmate, she begins to realize that it’s okay to not fit into neat, pixelated boxes.
Ollie In Between
By Jess Callans
Fiewel & Friends
Puberty, AKA the ultimate biological predator, is driving a wedge between soon-to-be 13-year-old Ollie Thompson and their lifelong friends. When a school project asks them to write an essay on what it means to be a woman (if anyone’s got an answer, that’d be great), and one of their new friends is the target of bullying, Ollie is caught between the safety of fleeing from their own differences or confronting the risks of fighting to take their own path forward.
Unboxing Libby
By Steph Cherrywell
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Max isn’t always sweet and bubbly. That wouldn’t be an issue except for the fact that she’s programmed to be. “Max” isn’t even her real name. She’s a Libby– one of the most popular A.I.Cademy Girl social robots, which top the sales charts for girls ages eight to twelve. But despite her packaging and her programmed memories, Max is feeling the opposite of perfect. The only thing she wants to know is why. But this question uncovers bigger answers than she bargained for – like the shocking fate of the other A.I.Cademy Girls, and what the founders of their idyllic community are really hiding.
Anthologies
Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity
Edited by Lee Mandelo
Erewhon Books
Filled with brutal honesty, raw emotions, sexual escapades, and delightful whimsy, Amplitudes speaks to the longstanding tradition of queer fiction as protest. This essential collection serves as an evolving map of our celebrations, anxieties, wishes, pitfalls, and—most of all—our rallying cry that we’re here, we’re queer—and the future is ours!
Both/And
Edited by Denne Michelle Norris
HarperOne
Featuring seventeen essays by trans people of color—spanning writers, scientists, actors, activists, and drag queens—Both/And explores what it means to live as a trans or gender nonconforming person of color today. Inspired by Electric Literature’s groundbreaking series and edited by the first Black, openly trans editor-in-chief of a major literary publication, Both/And uplifts and amplifies stories of queer joy, heartbreak, rage, and self-discovery.
Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing
Edited by Alden Jones
Blair
An inclusive LGBTQ+ travel anthology, Edge of the World explores what it means to be a queer person moving through the world. These lively essays by luminary writers offer a queer perspective on how people experience other cultures and how other cultures receive queer people. This anthology of essays includes the perspectives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans American authors from multiple ethnic identities, showcasing the travel writing of both established and emerging authors across a wide age spectrum to address these central questions.
A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States
Edited by Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dallas Denny, Jamison Green, Kyan Lynch
State University of New York Press
Arriving at a critical moment in the struggle for transgender rights, this anthology takes an empathic approach to an embattled subject. Sweeping in scope and deeply personal in nature, this groundbreaking volume traces the development of transgender medicine across three centuries–centering the voices of transgender individuals, debunking myths about gender-affirming care, and empowering readers to grasp the complexities of this evolving field.
The New Lesbian Pulp
Edited by Octavia Saenz & Sarah Fonseca
Feminist Press
Lesbian pulp fiction thrived in the oppressive 1950s, telling subversive stories of lonely sapphic women who find connection, passion, and revenge. In The New Lesbian Pulp, editors Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz revive the genre for today, layering nuance into classic tropes while dialing up the melodrama, romantic peril, and collateral damage. Here, gathered just for you, are some of today’s best lesbian pulp stories. Don’t be afraid. Pick them up.
Seahorses: Trans, Nonbinary, and Gender-Expansive Pregnancy
Edited by Simon Knaphus
PM Press
What can trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people expect from pregnancy? This collection brings together a wide spectrum of voices to share unique stories about navigating family building, pregnancy, fertility treatments, conception, loss, healthcare, abortion, childbirth, the early days of parenting, and the intersections of legal, political, and cultural contexts. Seahorses is both a vital resource for trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive communities and an invitation for readers of all genders to get a glimpse of trans joy and resilience that will stick with you and inspire you to love a little deeper.
The article connects technology and human behavior in a very understandable way.