100+ books by trans and non-binary authors

hey everyone,

today’s post is part of a collaboration with 8 amazing trans and non-binary book bloggers to bring you over 100 book recommendations written by trans & non-binary authors!

full disclosure before we begin that i myself am a cis lesbian, but every other blogger involved with this series of posts are trans and/or non- binary and every book on my list, and everyone else’s, is written by a trans and/or non-binary author. I’ve also left links to the authors website where possible so please check those out too and look into supporting their other works!

in my post you’ll find 15 book recommendations and you can find more on each persons blog by clicking the links below, racking up at 100+ books!!

🌈 Artie’s post: https://artiecarden.com/2021/06/26/trans-books-by-trans-authors/

🌈 Ocean’s post: https://oceansofnovels.wordpress.com/2021/06/26/100-books-by-trans-and-nonbinary-authors/

🌈 Vee’s post: https://veebookishbooks.wordpress.com/2021/06/26/100-books-by-trans-and-non-binary-authors/

🌈 Anna’s post: https://readsrainbow.com/2021/06/book-recs-100-books-by-trans-non-binary-authors

🌈 Danni’s post: https://therushofabook.wordpress.com/2021/06/26/ten-trans-authors-you-should-read/

🌈 Andee’s post: http://andeewilliams.com/100-books-by-trans-nonbinary-authors

🌈 Anniek’s post: https://anniekslibrary.wordpress.com/?p=5843

🌈 Bertie’s post: https://luminositylibrary.wordpress.com/2021/06/26/100-books-by-trans-and-non-binary-authors-for-pride-month-collaboration/

We all worked really hard on these posts and are passionate about getting these books into more hands so please feel free to share! You can also find more books in my ‘101’ series here: https://molsbymoonlight.wordpress.com/category/101-series/

⭐️1. A NATURAL HISTORY OF TRANSITION by Callum Angus (both the author and the characters are trans, author uses he/him pronouns): A collection of short stories that disrupts the notion that trans people can only have one transformation. Like the landscape studied over eons, change does not have an expiration date for these trans characters, who grow as tall as buildings, turn into mountains, unravel hometown mysteries, and give birth to cocoons. https://www.calangus.com/bio

⭐️2. THE METHUEN DRAMA BOOK OF TRANS PLAYS edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Angela Farr Schiller and Leanna Keyes: The first play anthology to offer 8 new plays by trans playwrights featuring trans characters. You can find a summary of all 8 plays using the following link which I’d highly recommend because they all sound amazing!!: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-methuen-drama-book-of-trans-plays-9781350179219/

⭐️3. VARIATIONS by Juliet Jacques (author is trans, uses she/her pronouns, and the book features trans characters and fictional exploration of british trans history): Using fiction inspired by found material and real events, Variations explores the history of transgender Britain with lyrical, acerbic wit. It travels from Oscar Wilde’s London to austerity-era Belfast via inter-war Cardiff, a drag bar in Liverpool just after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, Manchester’s protests against Clause 28, and Brighton in the 2000s. Jacques rewrites and reinvigorates a history so often relegated to stale police records and sensationalist news headlines. https://julietjacques.com

⭐️4. ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS by Yah Yah Scholfield (the author is a non-binary lesbian and uses they/them pronouns): When Judith escapes her mother to the Georgia countryside, she makes a home for herself in a cottage. And it’s there she begins her Sunday routine. And it’s there she learns of the beings in the woods. And it’s also there she meets Nemoira, the woman who changes her life in ways Judith never even thought of. A southern gothic novel exploring transformation, metamorphosis, closure, retribution, nature, and healing. https://www.fluoresensitive.com

⭐️5. THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS by Micah Nemerever (the author is trans and uses he/him pronouns): When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive and insecure, Paul feels isolated and alone until he meets Julian. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, but as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him. As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence. https://micahnemerever.com

⭐️6. A DREAM OF A WOMAN by Casey Plett (both the author and the MC’s are trans women): Short stories centering transgender women seeking stable, adult lives. In “Hazel and Christopher,” two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In “Perfect Places,” a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In “Couldn’t Hear You Talk Anymore,” the narrator reflects on her tumultuous life and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman. https://caseyplett.wordpress.com/about/

⭐️7. TRANS GALACTIC BIKE RIDE edited by Lydia Rogue (editor uses they/them pronouns): “Take a ride with us as we explore a future where trans and nonbinary people are the heroes. In worlds where bicycle rides bring luck, a minotaur needs a bicycle, and werewolves stalk the post-apocalyptic landscape, nobody has time to question gender. Whatever your identity you’ll enjoy these stories that are both thought-provoking and fun adventures. Find out what the future could look like if we stopped putting people into boxes and instead empowered each other to reach for the stars.” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48666696

⭐️8. LITTLE BLUE ENCYCLOPAEDIA by Hazel Jane Plante (both the author and MC’s are trans): A playful and poignant novel that sifts through a queer trans woman’s unrequited love for her straight trans friend who died, interspersed with encyclopedia entries about a fictional TV show set on an isolated island. The experimental form functions at once as a manual for how pop culture can help soothe and mend us and as an exploration of oft-overlooked sources of pleasure, including karaoke, birding, and butt toys. Ultimately, Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) reveals the woman the narrator loved, why she loved her, and the depths of what she has lost. https://www.hazeljaneplante.com/about

⭐️9. THE SEEP by Chana Porter (the author uses she/they pronouns and the MC is trans): Trina is a 50 year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle, but nonetheless world-changing, invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible. Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated. Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. https://www.chanaporter.com

⭐️10. LOTE by Shola Von Reinhold (author uses they/them pronouns): A literary novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda’s fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet, Hermia Druitt, LOTE is an exploration of aesthetics, Beauty, and the ephemeral realm in which they exist. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52867796

⭐️11. MAIDEN MOTHER CRONE edited by gwen benaway (the editor and contributing authors are all trans): Drawing on high fantasy and other genres of fantasy writing, this is the first anthology by trans femme authors to explore the realms of magic, supernatural beings, and alternative universes. Enter worlds of wonder where trans femmes are powerful heroines, sorceresses, and warriors fighting against dark forces in vivid magical worlds. With celebrated writers like Kai Cheng Thom, Casey Plett, and Gwen Benaway, this anthology will transform the landscape of fantasy and offer radical portals into excitement, danger, and transformation. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44284615

⭐️12. EVERYONE ON THE MOON IS ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL by julian k jarboe: A debut collection of body-horror fairy tales and mid-apocalyptic Catholic cyberpunk, memory and myth, loss and age, and queer fabulism. Bodily autonomy and transformation, the importance of negative emotions, unhealthy relationships, and bad situations amidst the staggering and urgent question of how build and nurture meaning, love, and safety in a larger world/society that might not be “fixable.” https://juliankjarboe.com/

⭐️13. THE DISCOMFORT OF EVENING by marieke lucas rijneveld (the author is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns): Winner of the 2020 international booker prize! Jas lives with her devout farming family in the rural Netherlands. One winter’s day, her older brother joins an ice skating trip. Resentful at being left alone, she makes a perverse plea to God; he never returns. As grief overwhelms the farm, Jas succumbs to a vortex of increasingly disturbing fantasies, watching her family disintegrate into a darkness that threatens to derail them all. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49374086

⭐️14. HOMESICK by nino cipri (author is trans non-binary and uses they/them pronouns): Dark, irreverent, and truly innovative, the nine speculative stories in Homesick meditate on the theme of home and our estrangement from it, and what happens when the familiar suddenly shifts into the uncanny. In stories that foreground queer relationships and transgender or nonbinary characters, Cipri delivers the origin story for a superhero team comprised of murdered girls; a housecleaner discovering an impossible ocean in her least-favorite clients’ house; a man haunted by keys that appear suddenly in his throat; and a team of scientists and activists discovering the remains of a long-extinct species of intelligent weasels. https://ninocipri.com

⭐️15. THE THIRTY NAMES OF NIGHT by zeyn joukhadar (both the author and the MC are trans): Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s–in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. https://www.zeynjoukhadar.com