Most of the books and stories that Otherwise Award jurors read to pick a winner are nominated by authors and readers. We need your suggestions. If you’ve read a work of science fiction or fantasy that explores or expands our notions of gender, please tell us about it by filling out the recommendation form below. If you have more than one, just fill out the form again with a new recommendation and repeat the process until you’ve told us about them all.
Recommendations close on the 8th of December, 2022. Because recommendations are accepted from everyone, and haven’t been reviewed by the jury, we request that nominated creators not publicize their appearance on this list: if you win, or your work shows up on an honor list or long list, please publicize to your heart’s content!
The 2022 Otherwise Award will be given in 2023, location to be determined.
To let us know something related to recommendations that doesn’t fit in the form, please email recommendations@otherwiseaward.org.
Anything that you enter in the Author, Title, Publisher, Link, and Additional Comments fields will be publicly visible. If you want to add non-public comments about the work that you’re recommending, email recommendations@otherwiseaward.org.
Recommendations are Closed
The current Recommendations for the Otherwise Award can be found here:
2025 Otherwise Award Recommendations
The 2022 Otherwise Award Recommendations
| Author | Title | Publisher | Comments | Sub Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Naimon | Crafting with Ursula podcast series | The Crafting with Ursula series invited 12 writers, one each month in 2022, to engage with the work of Ursula K. Le Guin in relation to their own work. The majority of these conversations engaged with the question of gender within Le Guin's work & life. The conversation with her biographer Julie Phillips perhaps went most deeply into Le Guin's journey around both gender and feminism (including her evolving friendship with Tiptree), but the conversations with Becky Chambers on gender fluidity in the Hainish universe, Lidia Yuknavitch on The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, William Alexander talking about gender in relation to The Tombs of Atuan, Gabrielle Bellot talking about Le Guin from a transgender perspective, Karen Joy Fowler discussing women, animals and science in Le Guin's work, and Maria Dahvana Headley on feminist translations did as welltinhouse.com/th_podcast_cat/crafting-wit… | 2022-12-08 18:18:01 | ||
| J.C. Snow | The Phoenix and the Sword | indie | An epic fantasy set in a cultivation world, exploring gender and personal identity through an unexpected queer love story across two lifetimes. Determined to escape her past, Aili Fallon won’t let anything get in the way of her new goal to join the war as a combat nurse. When a mysterious woman named Liu Chenguang pursues her and then disappears in a tempest of magic and blood, her anger becomes a destroying fire, and she realizes that she is now a killer that can’t die. Seeking answers, she crosses through phoenix fire into a new world. But when she finds her lost love, it is only to learn that she has always been a pawn in an ancient game of immortals, the keystone in a demon’s curse.amazon.com/phoenix-sword-crane-moon-cycl… | 2022-12-08 14:50:39 | |
| Kaija Rayne | Sanctuary Heart | Kaija Rayne Books | This one has a pub date of December 2022. I've had the honour of reading an early copy. The MC has no sex and no defined gender throughout. It was really well done. | 2022-12-08 12:28:10 | |
| Kaija Rayne | Soulbound | Kaija Rayne Books | Same series as my other recommendation. This is the one where the genderqueer MC becomes a PoV character. I love how this author writes gender non conforming rep.amazon.com/gp/product/b09f39dccg | 2022-12-08 12:26:47 | |
| Kaija RayneKaelan Rhywiol | BloodBound | Kaija Rayne Books | I deeply enjoyed the main character's journey through this series of figuring out they're non-binary. There's also a genderqueer side character who becomes and MC later in the series.amazon.com/bloodbound-book-one-ace-assas… | 2022-12-08 12:24:59 | |
| Claire North | Ithaca | Redhook | hachettebookgroup.com/titles/claire-nort… | 2022-12-08 09:26:37 | |
| Jo Miles | Scientists Confirm: There’s a Black Hole in the Center of Your Heart | Lightspeed | lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/scientist… | 2022-12-08 06:42:04 | |
| Laura Blackwell | What the Dead Birds Taught Me | Nightmare Magazine | nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/what-the-… | 2022-12-08 06:40:44 | |
| EA Crawley | How to Make a Spell Jar | Speculatively Queer | Published in the anthology "Xenocultivars: Stories of Queer Growth" | 2022-12-08 02:02:51 | |
| P.H. Lee | This Story is Called "The Transformation of Things" | Speculatively Queer | First published in the anthology "Xenocultivars: Stories of Queer Growth"—link is to a publicly available reprintzooscape-zine.com/transformation-of-thin… | 2022-12-08 02:00:51 | |
| Melanie Gillman | Other Ever Afters | Random House Graphic | penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647312/othe… | 2022-12-08 00:39:35 | |
| K. Tempest Bradford | Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr) | amazon.com/ruby-finley-vs-interstellar-i… | 2022-12-07 22:09:17 | |
| Sienna Tristen | The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming, Book Two: Practice | Molewhale Press | The second half of a deliciously genderqueer cozy fantasy travelogue! Following our ace-aro protagonist on a sacred pilgrimage, we engage with many cultures that explore and expand notions of gender, from genderfluid wisewomen to nonbinary acrobats to trans* theology students and more. The protagonist's own gender fluctuates as the story progresses, highlighting the way we can identify in many layered ways depend ing on cultural and personal context. Plus tender examinations of mental illness, trauma and forgiveness, and learning to love the world after it has wounded you. | 2022-12-07 18:25:52 | |
| Tehnuka N/A | Elephant Doctor | Worlds of Possibility | This is a short story about a non-binary person and their struggle to find a fair and compassionate primary care physician. In a short space it explores and challenges assumptions and biases along multiple axes. juliarios.com/introducing-the-october-20… | 2022-12-07 15:00:28 | |
| C.H. Pearce | The Quick Study | Etherea | ethereamagazine.com/the-quick-study/ | 2022-12-07 14:42:32 | |
| R. F. Kuang | Babel | Harper Voyager | This book may not seem like an obvious choice based on the premise, but it engages deeply with the intersection of feminism and racism, exploring progressive politics, colonialism, white feminism, social justice, classism, and the ways oppression affects everyone in society. | 2022-12-07 14:41:52 | |
| Maya MacGregor | The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester | Astra | Sam is a non-binary teen who interacts with a peer group including several other queer kids of various genders. This explores prejudice and trauma and also healing and healthy community building. Also, there is a ghost story mystery to solve. | 2022-12-07 14:31:00 | |
| C. S. E. Cooney | Saint Death’s Daughter | Rebellion | Rich worldbuilding including a festival devoted to the many gendered god of fire, with floomping. Also many different explorations of performative femininity, powerful women, and the complicated dynamics of power imbalances. | 2022-12-07 14:26:56 | |
| Aliette de Bodard | The Red Scholar's Wake | Gollancz | Lesbian space pirates! | 2022-12-07 14:25:18 | |
| Emery Robin | The Stars Undying | Orbit | hachettebookgroup.com/titles/emery-robin… | 2022-12-07 14:22:48 | |
| Alex White | August Kitko and the Mechas from Space | Orbit | hachettebookgroup.com/titles/alex-white/… | 2022-12-07 14:21:54 | |
| Mira Grant | Square³ | Subterannean Press | Published on 31 December 2021, Square³ features 2 sisters separated by eldritch goings on | 2022-12-07 14:05:49 | |
| Alexandra Rowland | Some by Virtue Fall | Self-published | 2022-12-07 13:53:20 | ||
| John Scalzi | The Kaijū Preservation Society | Tor | A portal sf/f novella with queer and non-binary characters, as well as the gender of the protagonist not being specified | 2022-12-07 13:44:43 | |
| Alexandra Rowland | A Taste of Gold and Iron | Tor.com | An Ottoman-themed queernorm m/m fantasy romance and conspiracy thriller, with a matriarchal imperial lineage, militarily-powerful female characters and non-binary characters | 2022-12-07 13:40:12 | |
| Craig Laurance Gidney | The Nectar of Nightmares | Underland Press | Craig Laurance Gidney is a self-proclaimed "Queer Afro-Fabulist." The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds. He has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award on multiple occasions. underlandpress.com/nectar.php | 2022-12-07 13:18:08 | |
| Rym Kechacha | To Catch a Moon | Unsung Stories | To say that there are owl women and witches and daughters of the moon, seamstresses and writers and painters who can call worlds into being, enchantments and sorrows, is to only scratch the surface of this extraordinary new novel by Rym Kechacha. Inspired by the work of Spanish surrealist Remedios Varo, this is a magical, melancholy story, the kind of book that makes you remember why you love reading in the first place.– Lynda E. Rucker, award-winning author of The Moon Will Look Strangeunsungstories.co.uk/to-catch-a-moon-by-r… | 2022-12-07 12:59:42 | |
| RSA Garcia | How To Win Friends and Influence Rebellion | Outland Entertainment - Bridge to Elsewhere Anthology | In an intriguing take on motherhood and self identity, the pregnant alien Xani discovers that the kin she is hunting down for recycling is also searching for her. When the two meet there is a clash of cultures and a questioning of faith and reality. Xani has to choose between honouring her people's way of life or learning the truth about herself and her unborn children. This story explores the concepts of motherhood and duty when juxtaposed against faith and societal expectations. | 2022-12-07 12:45:48 | |
| RSA Garcia | Bishop's Opening | Clarkesworld Magazine | Bishop's Opening by RSA Garcia shows LGBTQ+ representation in a positive light, has both male and female lead characters and examines the concept of family. It imagines a future where all gender presentations are accepted and normalised without need for explanation and chosen pronouns are respected. The novella also introduces a social strata that does not rely on traditional gender norms but instead on a chess based hierarchy. clarkesworldmagazine.com/garcia_01_22/ | 2022-12-07 12:27:51 | |
| Dominique Dickey | Slow Communication | Fantasy Magazine | An alien consciousness called the Leviathan visits a daughter of each generation of a particular family. Each time it first answers the last question it was asked and accepts one new question. Each woman who is visited by the Leviathan learns her mother’s (or grandmother’s) answer and asks a question she herself will never get the answer to. A conversation spread across generations of a single family who have made it the central fact of their lives. The problem though, is that the newest most-likely to be visited member of the family isn’t sure they are daughter at all.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/slow-com… | 2022-12-07 12:23:27 | |
| K.S. Villoso | The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng | Orbit | The last book in the Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy, which plays with the readers' privilege and gender expectations as they go through an adventure rife with misogyny and double standards. “A powerful new voice in epic fantasy. Villoso deftly creates an intricate and compelling world of high fantasy intrigue and adventure dominated by a crafty, whip- smart heroine determined to unite her kingdom at any cost.” — Kameron Hurley, author of The Light Brigade “K. S. Villoso dismantled the heavily stereotyped strong female character within epic fantasy and built it anew. Queen Talyien is flawed, beautifully so, making her one of the more realistic female characters I’ve read to date.” —Hypable | 2022-12-07 10:52:42 | |
| Alexis Brooks de Vita | A Girl Crawls in a Dark Corner | Tor (Africa Risen anthology) | publishing.tor.com/africarisen-shereeren… | 2022-12-07 10:39:09 | |
| Tlotlo Tsamaase | Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition) | Tor (Africa Risen anthology) | publishing.tor.com/africarisen-shereeren… | 2022-12-07 10:37:41 | |
| Wole Talabi | A Dream of Electric Mothers | Tor (Africa Risen anthology) | publishing.tor.com/africarisen-shereeren… | 2022-12-07 10:36:06 | |
| Priya Chand | It Takes A Village | Clarkesworld | A story where gender is defined by the person's role, rather than vice versa.clarkesworldmagazine.com/chand_03_22/ | 2022-12-07 09:14:48 | |
| Bendi Barrett | Empire of the Feast | Neon Hemlock | In Empire of the Feast, we awaken with Riverson, 32nd ruler of the Stag Empire, as he attempts to govern without the memories of his previous lives. To survive the ever-sharpening gears of war, he will need to mend the political schisms threatening to tear his empire apart while maintaining the erotic rituals holding off the eldritch horror known only as the Rapacious.neonhemlock.com/books/empire-of-the-feas… | 2022-12-07 07:40:56 | |
| L.D. LewisCharles Payseur (co-editors) | We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2021 | Neon Hemlock | "With this lovely anthology, Lewis and Payseur collect 15 speculative shorts that range widely in tone and genre, but all circle themes of love and identity...There's something here for any reader of speculative fiction to admire." —Publishers Weeklyneonhemlock.com/books/were-here-the-best… | 2022-12-07 07:39:57 | |
| Izzy Wasserstein | All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away From | Neon Hemlock | “Above all, the multifaceted portrayals of gender are a consistent strength throughout, rendering trans and nonbinary characters with vitality and nuance.” —Publishers Weeklyneonhemlock.com/books/all-the-hometowns | 2022-12-07 07:38:29 | |
| Emily BergslienKat Weaver | Uncommon Charm | Neon Hemlock | In the 1920s gothic comedy Uncommon Charm, bright young socialite Julia and shy Jewish magician Simon decide they aren’t beholden to their families’ unhappy history. Together they confront such horrors as murdered ghosts, alive children, magic philosophy, a milieu that slides far too easily into surrealist metaphor, and, worst of all, serious adult conversation.neonhemlock.com/books/uncommon-charm | 2022-12-07 07:37:12 | |
| dave ringCraig L. GidneyGabriella Etoniru (co-editors) | Baffling Year One | Neon Hemlock | “There are no false notes in this strange and dazzling anthology of 26 queer, speculative stories, selected from the first year of Baffling Magazine—which is particularly impressive given the wide range of tone, subject matter, and subgenre.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)neonhemlock.com/books/baffling-year-one | 2022-12-07 07:35:19 | |
| Grace Byron | Emo Trophy Wife | Triangle House Review | triangle.house/emo-trophy-wife | 2022-12-07 07:26:39 | |
| Emrys Donaldson | Insert Coin | Arsenal Pulp Press | https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/Q/Queer-Little-Nightmareslithub.com/insert-coin/ | 2022-12-07 07:23:55 | |
| Maya Deane | Wrath Goddess Sing | William Morrow | Drawing on ancient texts and modern archeology to reveal the trans woman’s story hidden underneath the well-known myths of Achilles, Maya Deane’s Wrath Goddess Sing weaves a compelling, pitilessly beautiful vision of the last days of the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age in all its messy, syncretist, Western Civ-defying complexity. Where non-transfeminine writers flatten trans women's experience to fit a comfortable formula, Wrath Goddess Sing lives in the contradictions, beauties, and violence that shape trans women's worlds. harpercollins.com/products/wrath-goddess… | 2022-12-07 05:54:19 | |
| Jordan Taylor | Bramblewilde | Uncanny | uncannymagazine.com/article/bramblewilde… | 2022-12-07 05:47:53 | |
| Vida Cruz-Borja | Song of the Mango and Other New Myths | Ateneo University Press | 2022-12-07 03:37:46 | ||
| Vida Cruz-Borja | Child of Two Worlds | F&SF | 2022-12-07 03:36:52 | ||
| Juno Dawson | Her Majesty's Royal Coven | 2022-12-06 23:36:47 | |||
| Rhea Ewing | Fine: A Comic About Gender | Liveright | 2022-12-06 20:57:44 | ||
| Emmi Itäranta | The Moonday Letters | Titan Books | titanbooks.com/70970-the-moonday-letters… | 2022-12-06 19:11:06 | |
| S.B. Medina | Lost Ladies of the Nightmare | amazon.com/lost-ladies-nightmare-s-b-med… | 2022-12-06 17:35:50 | ||
| Vaishnavi Patel | Kaikeyi | Redhook | A feminist reimagining of an ancient Indian epic, giving voice to women who were relegated to the sidelines of the original myth and exploring gender expectations and defying patriarchy. The main character is asexual, and in addition to being an amazing work of historical fantasy, the book also examines what it is to be an ace woman with compassion and care. | 2022-12-06 17:01:34 | |
| Foz Meadows | A Strange and Stubborn Endurance | MacMillan | Not only is it gloriously gender queer, this is also one of the most amazing fantasy adventures I've read in the past few years. | 2022-12-06 16:50:46 | |
| Rebecca Roanhorse | Fevered Star | Simon & Schuster | 2022-12-06 16:09:39 | ||
| Toshiya Kamei | Last of His Kind | galaxysedge.com/magazines/issue-58-septe… | 2022-12-06 14:36:42 | ||
| Heather Rose Jones | The Language of Roses | Queen of Swords Press | Intersectional queer re-visioning of Beauty and the Beast with incisive examination of gender and relationship roles and expectations.amazon.com/language-roses-heather-rose-j… | 2022-12-06 14:27:34 | |
| Aiden Thomas | The Sunbearer Trials | Feiwel & Friends | Teo, a gay 17-year-old semidiós, the trans son of Quetzal, goddess of birds, competes with 9 other semidioses, including another trans boy and a non-binary semidiós, in The Sunbearer Trials. “The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all―they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body used to fuel the Sun Stones that will protect the people of Reino del Sol for the next 10 years.” A Mexican-inspired YA fantasy with a protagonist who is still coming to accept his place as a “second-rank” Jade semidiós and his gender identity and presentation. | 2022-12-06 14:07:33 | |
| Hal Schrieve | Demon Butch | Self-Published | This completed comic (more of a short graphic novel) is what would happen if Alison Bechdel had written "What We Do In the Shadows".halschrieve.itch.io/demon-butch | 2022-12-06 14:02:37 | |
| Bogi Takács | Four Glass Cubes (Item Description) | Baffling Mag | bafflingmag.com/issue-seven/four-glass-c… | 2022-12-06 14:01:32 | |
| Michael Meyerhofer | Isabeau's New Name | Swords and Sorcery Magazine | swordsandsorcerymagazine.com/archive/isa… | 2022-12-06 13:59:55 | |
| H.A. Clarke | The Scratch Daughters | Erewhon | A YA novel about witches that explores the diversity of gender within the lesbian community.erewhonbooks.com/books/the-scratch-daugh… | 2022-12-06 13:58:37 | |
| Sam J Miller | Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy | Solaris Satellites | 2 young queer Jewish men — a boxer and a magic-tattooist — and a queer female Jewish gangster, taking on 1920s New York. Queer love, magical tattoos and Jewish gangsters making a better world. A delightful novella. | 2022-12-06 13:56:29 | |
| C.M. Fields | The Twenty-Second Lover of House Rousseau | Diabolical Plots | Short story. A searing view of meticulously constructed gender roles by a meticulously constructed person.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-88c-the-t… | 2022-12-06 13:50:58 | |
| Stephanie Burt | We Are Mermaids | Graywolf | graywolfpress.org/books/we-are-mermaids | 2022-12-06 13:47:30 | |
| C L Polk | Even Though I Knew the End | Tor.com | A supernatural noir whodunit, with a queer female protagonist — a magical detective — working for “Marlowe”, a rich, queer female client, in 1940s Chicago. We see a glimpse of the underground queer club scene and of involuntary confinement in an asylum of another queer woman, as well as of a loving fulfilled relationship between the protagonist and her religiously-devoted girlfriend that is key to the protagonist and her motivations, while the characters navigate both the societal expectations of women in the real-world as well as those of the magical society of Polk's worldbuilding. | 2022-12-06 13:40:17 | |
| Bogi Takács | Folded Into Tendril and Leaf | Speculatively Queer | Published in the Xenocultivars anthology | 2022-12-06 13:36:24 | |
| Gretchen Felker-Martin | Manhunt | Tor Nightfire | A groundbreaking work of science fiction / horror, examining the contemporary moral panic around transgender people and the way in which some (cis) women perceive trans women as a threat to their womanhood, the way in which trans men are largely ignored by that moral panic, and some of what the transgender experience might feel like after an apocalypse, as well as class, populism and fascism. In particular, the genre lacks for works that consider how a gendered apocalypse might impact on trans and nonbinary survivors, let alone written by trans authors. | 2022-12-06 13:12:08 | |
| Justine Norton-Kertson | Do Me Out | Utopia Science Fiction Magazine | utopiasciencefiction.com/domeout | 2022-12-06 12:18:11 | |
| Nicola Griffith | Spear | Tor.com | A gender-flipped retelling of events in and around King Arthur's court at Camelot, although in this story it is Arturus's court of Caer Leon. Peretur is a brave woman who desires to be accepted as one of Arturus's Companions (which in other versions of this tale were known as the Knights of the Round Table. | 2022-12-06 11:45:32 | |
| Nghi Vo | Siren Queen | Tor.com | Not only a story about a woman who loves other women, also a woman trying to make it in a man's world, and a woman of color trying to make it in an industry which had previously relegated those of her ethnicity to menial positions of subjugation. | 2022-12-06 11:37:35 | |
| T Kingfisher | What Moves the Dead | Titan | An amazing retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher with a main character that uses neo-pronouns in a historical setting. goodreads.com/book/show/60911018-what-mo… | 2022-12-06 11:32:18 | |
| Isaac R. Fellman | Dead collections | Penguin | 2022-12-06 11:17:41 | ||
| Jane Rawson | A History of Dreams | Brio Books | The book does not have a US publisher, but let me or my Australian publisher know if you would like a PDF. Thanks, Jane.briobooks.com.au/collections/featured/pr… | 2022-12-06 11:15:12 | |
| Chloe N. Clark | Escaping the Body | Interstellar Flight Press | interstellarflightpress.com/escapingtheb… | 2022-12-06 11:08:58 | |
| Andrew Wilmot | Volcanic | Augur | A non-binary individual tries to keep herself together—literally—in a world where people are so bottled up they're erupting into their unrealized dreams and ambitions.augurmag.com/volcanic/?fbclid=iwar3awei-… | 2022-12-06 10:56:30 | |
| Andrew Wilmot | Glamour-Us | Arsenal Pulp Press | a near-future tale exploring new avenues for gender expression, and the schism that it creates within the trans and gender non-conforming community itself.arsenalpulp.com/books/q/queer-little-nig… | 2022-12-06 10:53:54 | |
| Andrew Wilmot | Born Again | Fusion Fragment | An apocalypse story from the perspective of a young trans woman navigating a world that is itself in a state of transition—and the beauty and horrors therein.fusionfragment.com/issue-10/ | 2022-12-06 10:51:17 | |
| Jessica Reisman | Aconie's Bees | Analog Science Fiction and Fact | May/June issue - A worker of the Megachile pluto tribe—insecta, hymenoptera, leafcutter, resin bee—rumbled heavily through the air. Biome morning: light stretched thin as a veil of citreous bio-skin on the stone of Aconie’s cliffside cave. The M. pluto, large as Aconie’s hand, burred and buzzed her wings, speaking of loss and darkness at the heart of things. Aconie held an arm out and the worker lit on Aconie’s wrist. The bee’s six legs needled a tattoo of unrest. Aconie studied the M. pluto’s dark body, beetle-like horn mandibles, precise amber furring: she was confused by the giant bee’s strange premonitions of ending. It was a tenor of bee-speech she had never heard. | 2022-12-06 10:48:09 | |
| Zoje Stage | The Girl Who Outgrew the World | Lethe Press | This novella addresses childhood, pregnancy, and abuse in an engaging magic realism style, as an eleven-year-old girl experiences a weird growth spurt, bringing unwanted and unwarranted attention from male peers and her physicians. Safe space is viewed as existing within the scope of the maternal while accessed by the kind-hearted.amazon.com/girl-who-outgrew-world/dp/159… | 2022-12-06 10:41:58 | |
| Karen Frost | The Lady Adventures Club | Bella Books | Historical fiction/fantasy bella books.com/category/author-karen-fr… | 2022-12-06 10:41:15 | |
| T. KingfisherUrsula Vernon | Nettle & Bone | Tor Books | This story explores, in a fantasy setting, the ways power is gendered. The women in this story have and lack power in a variety of spheres. The protagonist, Marra, embarks on a mission to rescue her sister from a terrible political marriage. Throughout the book women use what they can to help each other as best they can while enmeshed in unjust systems. It is a book of helpless rage, of trapped despair, and of the power that comes from having nothing left to lose. goodreads.com/book/show/56179377-nettle-… | 2022-12-06 10:38:59 | |
| Damilola Oyedotun | The Last of the Mbahuku Tribe. | Solarpunk Magazine | This Scifi-Fantasy story stressed the need for love in a community irrespective of gender. The Utopian community the characters find themselves in are not limited to just heterogeneous relationships, but homogeneous too. solarpunkmagazine.com/the-last-of-the-mb… | 2022-12-03 22:50:56 | |
| Damilola Oyedotun | A Manual On Different Options Of How To Bring A Loved One To Life. | Clarkesworld | This energetic cyberpunk story is about a lady who does everything possible to bring her dead sister back to life. She dealt with a crime mob who were willing to help her seek a full body prosthetics for her sister who was contained in a hard drive. What really stood out in this story for me was the extent and barriers the protagonist was willing to go, in order to achieve her mission. The story is packed with action, crime, family love, queerness, modern science and technology, and of course a thriling plot to get you reading to the end. Indeed what a man can do, a woman can do better. clarkesworldmagazine.com/muees_05_22/ | 2022-12-02 01:58:37 | |
| Ronald D. Mooreet al | For All Mankind | Apple TV+ | Four seasons in, this alternate-history-of-the-space-race TV series continues to do interesting things with gender. Probably the most interesting gender stuff was in the first few episodes of season 1, which aired in 2019 so I assume it’s no longer eligible. (I don’t see it on any of the rec lists, so I don’t think it was previously considered.) But the more recent seasons also handle gender interestingly, along with race and orientation issues. I don’t know how to recommend an ongoing and multi-season TV show, but I figured I would mention it and leave it up to y’all to figure out whether/how to consider it.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/for_all_mankind_(t… | 2022-12-01 18:34:26 | |
| Beatrice Eagle | Blame It on the Stardust: A Star Trek Vid Album | A monumental anthology of transformative work that interrogates and reflects on, among other topics, gender in Star Trek.archiveofourown.org/works/37855894 | 2022-12-01 15:09:24 | ||
| Marie Vibbert | The Gods Awoke | Journey Press | A phenomenal exploration of a matriarchy that is not a simple gender flip, amidst some excellent religious and racial discussion...all in an exciting science fiction/fantasy novel about what happens when the Gods you've been worshiping for centuries suddenly aren't abstract concepts anymore!journeypress.com/titles/the-gods-awoke/ | 2022-12-01 06:13:45 | |
| Al Hess | Mazarin Blues | self-published | A '21-22 SPSFC semifinalist! Introvert Reed Rothwell is part of a subculture of art deco era enthusiasts, pushing back against bland mainstream society and its mandated technology. Stuck with an AI assistant in his head is bad enough, but when he's inflicted with a forced upgrade to a new beta version, named Mazarin, the navigator starts to take on feelings and opinions of his own. a.co/d/9jry9p1 | 2022-11-29 19:20:26 | |
| Mary McMyne | THE BOOK OF GOTHEL | Redhook / Hachette | Outstanding imaginative blend of historical fiction and folklore. A prequel/retelling of Rapunzel with cameo appearances from Hildegard of Bingen and other historical figures. Engaging and spiritual.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/mary-mcmyne… | 2022-11-29 07:32:33 | |
| Debbie Urbanski | The Picnic Pavilion | Granta | Metafictional account of a conversation between three dead ancestors and a woman who will soon undergo a double mastectomy due to hereditary cancer risks. granta.com/the-picnic-pavilion-debbie-ur… | 2022-11-29 05:33:55 | |
| M. Shaw | My Dad Bought a Space Shuttle | Voyage YA Journal | thevoyagejournal.com/my-dad-bought-a-spa… | 2022-11-29 04:48:12 | |
| Kelly Barnhill | When Women Were Dragons | Penguin Random House | 2022-11-28 23:55:14 | ||
| Anna-Marie McLemore | Self-Made Boys | Feiwel & Friends | 2022-11-28 23:52:39 | ||
| Becky Chambers | Psalm for the Wild Built | 2022-11-28 22:36:56 | |||
| Noora Kamar | Call of the Roohani Bird | Augur Magazine | “Call of the Roohani Bird” relies on the myth of the Roohanikkili (Roohani Bird) which cries when there is the death of someone close. The short story’s nameless protagonist travels a rich and mystic plateau of grief, constructed by the minds and bodies of all who come in attendance of a death impend ing. Her grief is one of discomfort, of estrangement, of familial ties that grow weary with time and distance, of witnessing the passage of time in the bodies of the ones we love. The women of the house busy themselves in the material arrangements of death amidst a faith that stifles unbridled displays of grief and gatekeeps expressions of loss. The malakhs who record rights and wrongs bear witness to their grief that begins even before death comes calling. | 2022-11-28 15:37:41 | |
| Megan Giddings | The Women Could Fly | Amistad | Fantasy alternate near future in which women are heavily oppressed for being suspected of being witches. The protagonist has to come to grips with what her gender and mixed race/Blackness and bisexuality means for herself and in her society as she processes her relationship with her mother, who left the family and is suspected of being a witch. | 2022-11-28 13:17:23 | |
| Shannon Fay | External Forces | 47North | A mage for the British royals matches wits with a power-mad old foe in a beguiling novel of enchantments and daring by Shannon Fay, author of Innate Magic.amazon.com/external-forces-marrowbone-sp… | 2022-11-28 10:26:26 | |
| C. T. Rwizi | Primeval Fire | 47North | In the final riveting installment of C. T. Rwizi’s Scarlet Odyssey series, Salo’s death leaves his friends reeling—and a magical world in turmoil. amazon.com/primeval-fire-scarlet-odyssey… | 2022-11-28 10:24:51 | |
| Leanbh Pearson | She Who Walks Behind You | PS Publishing | From The Waste Land - stories inspired by T.S. Eliot's “The Waste Land” Plaintive ghosts, deep space, medieval castles, rising seas, parched deserts, abandoned villages…Inspired by its powerful themes—still highly resonant in an era looking for hope—nineteen original tales mark the centenary of Eliot’s poem. From the Waste Land brings together decorated writers and new voices in fantasy; ghost tales, horror, dystopia and science fiction. With a blend of the grotesque and the sublime, the poignant and the horrifying, the sad and the stoic, you’ll find stories that conjure wastelands from the 1500s to many centuries hence. You’ll also find the hope for humanity and the belief in our joint future that these writers seek for us all. CONTENTS She Who Walks Behind You, by Leanbh Pearsonpspublishing.co.uk/from-the-waste-land-t… | 2022-11-26 05:42:34 | |
| Samantha Allen | Patricia Wants to Cuddle | Zando | PATRICIA WANTS TO CUDDLE is a brilliant, hilarious, and suspenseful satire that skewers compulsory heterosexuality and the brands (i.e. The Bachelor franchise) that help to construct and reinforce traditional gender roles. Jacob Tobia had this to say about PATRICIA, "Samantha Allen has filled each page with unadulterated, unbridled, unhinged genius."zandoprojects.com/books/patriciawantstoc… | 2022-11-23 08:35:10 | |
| Laura Stanfill | Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary | Lanternfish Press | SINGING LESSONS FOR THE STYLISH CANARY, a historical fantasy, challenges gender roles within a 19th-century French village of makers. The men of Mireville build music boxes, barrel organs, and violins, while the women are schooled in bobbin lace. Protagonist Henri Blanchard is born into a family of serinette crafters--expected to make high-pitched instruments to teach canaries to sing specific songs--but he'd rather learn lacemaking with the girls. Serinettes are collected by wealthy women in the United States, who then hire male servants to crank them and change their prized birds' voices. Henri's path takes him from his family's parlor, where he begins questioning his destiny, to upstate New York, where he meets his first canary at the home of his family's best customer. A Powell's Best Book of 2022. “Even the heaviest parts of this novel float.” -Buzzfeed | 2022-11-23 06:42:32 | |
| Neil Cochrane | The Story of the Hundred Promises | Forest Avenue Press | The Washington Post named Neil's novel a Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2022; it was also named a most-anticipated book for October by Lambda and Book Riot and a Powell's Books best gifts under $25. Charlie Jane Anders called THE STORY OF THE HUNDRED PROMISES "the trans fable the world needs right now" and Shelf Awareness proclaimed it "a joyfully queer adventure for the world-weary." THE STORY OF THE HUNDRED PROMISES is a deconstructed fairy tale inspired by Beauty and the Beast, featuring a trans sailor and a nonbinary enchanter. neilcochranebooks.com/books | 2022-11-22 11:08:27 | |
| Debbie Urbanski | The Dirty Golden Yellow House | Lightspeed | A fantasy story about marital rape, power, compulsory and coercive sex, and motherhood.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-dirty… | 2022-11-08 08:37:33 | |
| R.B. Lemberg | Geometries of Belonging: Stories & Poems from the Birdverse | Fairwood Press | Nebula and Locus award finalist Lemberg returns us to the Birdverse with this powerful collection. The Birdverse is a complex, culturally diverse world, a realm with LGBTQIA characters and a wide range of family configurations. Lemberg probes the obstacles behind traditional social boundaries of cultures; overseeing this world is the deity Bird and all its incarnations. Each story and poem, exqusitely crafted, will richly reward long-time fans and newcomers alike. fairwoodpress.com/store/p126/geometries_… | 2022-11-07 18:07:43 | |
| Somto Ihezue | Whole | Cossmass Infinities, Reprinted by Flame Tree Press: First Peoples Shared Stories. | It follows the journey of five spirit siblings and all the love, pain, and grief along the way.cossmass.com/stories/whole/ | 2022-11-07 13:46:56 | |
| Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam | Glorious Fiends | Underland | Depiction of Mx. Hyde examines the history of horror films like Dr Jeckyl and Sister Hyde | 2022-11-06 17:37:09 | |
| London Snow | The Inside City | Self-published | A trans vampire trapped in the Las Vegas streets as the sun rises gives a thoughtful and anxiety-provoking reflection of being trans in public and the things we'll risk for just a moment of getting to feel like ourselves. Written in a breathless style suffused both with love for Vegas and a heartful optimism despite its tense atmosphere. londonsnow.itch.io/ | 2022-10-25 08:26:40 | |
| Angela Quinton | They Say Don't Get Clocked | Self published | A tense, incredible work that speaks to many aspects of transfemininity using lycanthropy to mirror and emphasize fear, anger, dysphoria, and visibility. One of the most cathartic trans monster stories I've ever encountered. argylewerewolf.itch.io/dont-get-clocked | 2022-10-25 08:23:46 | |
| E.D.E. Bell | Night Ivy | Atthis Arts | atthisarts.com/product/night-ivy/ | 2022-10-20 07:06:31 | |
| Fay Lee | Empathy | Hawkeye Publishing | When one of Sky Town’s most prized pleasure-nymphs wakes to find herself missing a sizeable sum of both money and memories, she has no idea who took her, why they did it… or what threat she poses to their monstrous plot. Slipping back into her world of splendor and seduction, she must navigate its hidden webs – both old and new – to find the spiders lurking within, and retake her stolen humanity. Combining the vision of Asimov with the voice of Atwood, Fay Lee creates a world where empathy is a service, a luxury and a corruption. For one pleasure-nymph, it may also be her only weapon. Available from the Australian publisher at Hawkeyebooks.com.au/empathy Kindle edition available on Amazon.amazon.com/empathy-fay-lee-ebook/dp/b0b2… | 2022-10-19 16:00:16 | |
| Ursula Whitcher | The Last Tutor | Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine | "Ise knew what was happening to them. They had researched the processes of puberty extensively, when they were deciding what should happen to their body. (Their body had its own ideas about height.) They knew they were prone to intense admirations at this age, that it was a necessary process of ego-development that would create a stable matrix for adult relationships, and that their feelings would eventually moderate to a refined nostalgia productive of great poetry. That wasn’t why they began spying on their tutor." | 2022-10-18 04:32:18 | |
| Peg Tittle | Fighting Words: notes for a future we won't have | Magenta | Fact-driven fiction. Speculative. Provocative. What could've been. What should've been. Several stories in this collection of fit the Otherwise mandate: "A PostTrans PostPandemic World," "Fighting Words," "Home for Unwed Fathers," and "How We Survived" – each "imagines gender otherwise"; "The Women's Party," "Men Need Sex," "The Mars Colonies," and "The Knitting Group" – each "finds different directions to move in toward newly possible places, by means of emergent and multiple pathways and methods"; "Justified," "Ballsy," "It's a Boy," and "What Sane Man" are "wise to the experience of being other … [due to] a critique of where we are" … hellyeahimafeminist.com/fighting-words/ | 2022-10-17 14:19:43 | |
| Lara Elena Donnelly | Base Notes | Thomas & Mercer | “Base Notes is an ambitious, upsetting novel of queer horror(s). As with the richly evocative scents Vic crafts, the reading experience moves through levels…Donnelly balances a serial killer protagonist, with all the foibles and frights one expects therein, against a treatise on the back-breaking systems of service labor, urban real estate, and artistic craft…the rich depths of Donnelly’s novel are going to be a perfect scent-match.” ―Tor.com (https://www.tor.com/2022/02/03/book-reviews-base-notes-by-lara-elena-donnelly/) | 2022-10-11 11:22:11 | |
| Oghenechovwe Ekpeki | Mother's Love, Father's Place | DON'T TOUCH THAT!: A Sci-Fi and Fantasy Parenting Anthology | https://www.amazon.com/DONT-TOUCH-THAT-Parenting-Anthology-ebook/dp/B0BFJRNMJ7/drive.google.com/file/d/19w-05ehsyz4dl0p… | 2022-10-10 19:20:03 | |
| Oghenechovwe Ekpeki | Destiny Delayed | Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine | drive.google.com/file/d/1kl0iks1m8xk-zmc… | 2022-10-06 11:44:10 | |
| Alexandra Almeida | Unanimity | Spiral Worlds | Shadow is a reluctant god with a broken mind and a death wish. He used to be Thomas Astley-Byron, an affluent young screenwriter whose creativity and idealism saved a world from the brink of collapse. Together with Henry Nowak, an AI expert, Tom created heaven on earth by inventing a Jungian simulated reality that helps humans confront their dark sides. The benevolent manipulation platform turned the two unelected leaders into beloved gods, but now everything is failing.amazon.com/gp/product/b0b1tgn5fm | 2022-10-05 18:45:29 | |
| Pudding Taine | Brother's Daddy & Sister's Mammy | Ann hardy | A untold tale that has beaten the flames of the burning bush. To the new evolution of why st Peter founder of the first known biblical experience and sounds of the first speaking of the secret spiritual tounge of god... which is (glossalalia) only permitted while under the church of a society in which is named B.D.S.M. a new foundation found by a lady and a queens pawn of glorious light that shines inside and out... a community of religious and spiritual creatures of farm and circus veterans and lineage beyond our own intellectual independence... | 2022-10-05 00:22:04 | |
| Peg Tittle | Jess | Magenta | Jess used to be a man. Then he found himself in a female body. It wasn't funny. (Why would anyone even think it was?) * "There's a scene in Tootsie (1982) that is surely one of the most unacclaimed scenes of all time: Dustin Hoffman's character, Michael, as 'Dorothy', makes a suggestion on the set, and the director dismisses it out of hand. As I remember it, Hoffman's face—conveying surprise, confusion, indignation—shows perfectly Michael's reaction to the absence of (and, just maybe, awareness of) male privilege/advantage. The entire movie should've been about that. Just that. It wasn't. And so I wrote Jess." hellyeahimafeminist.com/jess/ | 2022-10-03 15:39:06 | |
| Becky Chambers | A Prayer for the Crown-Shy | Tor | 2022-10-02 19:51:15 | ||
| Ruthanna Emrys | A Half-Built Garden | Tor | 2022-10-02 19:38:26 | ||
| Charlie Jane Anders | Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak | Tor | 2022-10-02 19:36:22 | ||
| Naseem Jamnia | The Bruising of Qilwa | Tachyon Publications | In this intricate debut fantasy introducing a queernormative Persian-inspired world, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease that causes political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender, healing, and family.tachyonpublications.com/product/the-brui… | 2022-09-30 11:25:25 | |
| Sam J. Miller | Boys, Beasts & Men | Tachyon Publications | Queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and satisfying revenge seamlessly intertwine in Sam J. Miller (Blackfish City, The Art of Starving)’s long-awaited debut short story collection. Whether innocent, guilty, or not even human, the beings in Miller’s gorgeously-crafted worlds can destroy you—yet leave you longing for them even more.tachyonpublications.com/product/boys-bea… | 2022-09-30 11:22:28 | |
| Rae Mariz | Weird Fishes | Stelliform Press | Rae Mariz's Weird Fishes is a work of Indigenous Hawaiian futurism which plays with the idea of different modes of perception through an odd-couple story of a sealfolk mermaid and a sentient cephalopod on a quest to stop the ocean's currents from slowing. The roles of mothers (absent, voluntary, and imposed) as both a creative and destructive force in a community make this a particularly relevant story for our post-Roe climate changed world.stelliform.press/index.php/product/weird… | 2022-09-28 13:47:18 | |
| Kathe Koja | Dark Factory | Meerkat Press | Dark Factory is a dance club: three floors of DJs, drinks, and customizable reality, everything you see and hear and feel. Ari Regon is the club's wild card floor manager, Max Caspar is a stubborn DIY artist, both chasing a vision of true reality. And rogue journalist Marfa Carpenter is there to write it all down. Then a rooftop rave sets in motion a fathomless energy that may drive Ari and Max to the edge of the ultimate experience. Dark Factory is Kathe Koja’s wholly original new novel from Meerkat Press, that combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing immersive events, to create a story that unfolds on the page, online, and in the reader's creative mind. Join us at DarkFactory.club. The story has already begun.meerkatpress.com/books/dark-factory/ | 2022-09-22 11:33:21 | |
| Jonathon Benjamin | American Airman, a memoir of a wounded veteran | Self-Published | Jonathon Benjamin is an author and playwright. He studied at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Having grown up in an Army family, it he enlisted in the Air Force. But, after a nearly fatal accident, he retired, having served 5 years, 12 days and 4.5 hours. He began playwriting as an undergraduate and his first play was produced by the John F Kennedy Center in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. That play became a book of prose that self-published. Jonathon currently lives in Seattle, Washington and enjoys being back in the Pacific Northwest.amazon.com/dp/b0b3v2796l | 2022-09-19 12:13:37 | |
| Tucker Lieberman | Most Famous Short Film of All Time | tRaum Books | A non/fiction hybrid, no-genre metaphysical cage fight. Narrated by a transgender man living in Boston in the mid-2010s. About threats, silencing, friendship, philosophy, the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination, stories inside stories, and the nature of time. Or maybe it's about a car. Visual formatting, especially in the 455-page print version.traumbooks.com/most-famous-short-film-of… | 2022-09-17 12:54:53 | |
| Sim Kern | Real Sugar is Hard to Find | Android Press | The science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories in Kern's collection explore intersections of gender identity, reproductive justice, family trauma, and climate change. In "The Propagator," the victim of a forced birth in a future, flooded Texas begins illegally propagating abortifacients behind the walls of her apartment. "The New Nomad" takes place in a far-future space colony, where an agender exobiologist grapples with bringing new life into a dying world. The narrator of "The End of the Nuclear Era" has always been proud to work at a Children's Center, offering shelter to any child wishing to leave their biological family behind. But their convictions are challenged when a resident asks to be adopted. Arranged in a progression from from dystopian to utopian worlds, these stories chart a path from late-capitalist climate despair to revolutionary optimism. | 2022-09-09 08:08:02 | |
| Romina Garber | Wolves of No World series | Wednesday Books | YA series featuring the first female werewolf in a hidden society of male Lobizones and female brujas. “A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizón, a werewolf.” First book published in 2020.goodreads.com/book/show/51179882-lobizon… | 2022-09-07 19:00:44 | |
| Eliot Laurenceet alia | Motherland: Fort Salem | Freeform | 3-season TV series, set in an alternate history in which (among many other changes) most of the US military consists of women who are witches. Seasons 2 and 3 include a non-binary witch. In some ways the show follows fairly standard military-drama conventions and YA-coming-of-age conventions, but the handling of gender and the magic and the alternate history make it pretty unusual. I wasn’t sure how to recommend a 3-season show; I certainly wouldn’t say that all the jurors should watch all 30 episodes to evaluate it. But the first couple of episodes of season 1 should suffice to give a sense of what the show is like.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/motherland:_fort_s… | 2022-09-07 18:48:33 | |
| Addie Tsai | Unwieldy Creatures | Jaded Ibis Press | Unwieldy Creatures is a queer, modern take on a very old sentiment: Who is the monster, and who gets to decide the label? A kaleidoscope of queer, racial, and bodily autonomy issues, the book uses the tale of Frankenstein as a launchpad for increasingly relevant inspections of identity, ambition, and human connection.jadedibispress.com/product/unwieldy-crea… | 2022-09-07 15:46:05 | |
| H.E. Edgmon | The Witch King | Inkyard Press | “To save a fae kingdom, a trans witch must face his traumatic past and the royal fiancé he left behind.” There’s also a 2022 sequel, The Fae Keeper.harpercollins.com/products/the-witch-kin… | 2022-09-04 22:14:48 | |
| R. B. Lemberg | The Unbalancing | Tachyon Publications | Queer romance in a queer-normative world between a Starkeeper and a poet as they work together to try and save their archipelago from destruction. One of the main POV characters is ichidi, or non-binary, and spends part of the novel trying to determine the ichidi variation that feels right for them. There are several variations of non-binary in this culture, signified by a token worn in the hair, that represent a continuum of non-binary gender. The variation one feels best represents them can change over time.tachyonpublications.com/product/the-unba… | 2022-09-04 10:56:15 | |
| Catherine Raphael | Journey to the Heart Stone | SparkPress | 2022-08-30 19:09:50 | ||
| Robert Joswick | Mass Transit | Black Rose Writing | Mass Transit (mystery/suspense). It’s aimed at mature readers who enjoy nostalgia and features a combative female PI struggling to make it in a male-dominated profession during the mid-fifties. Her emotions are worn in full view and keep the reader in constant suspense as Birdie Kelly strives for money, revenge, and a love life. Mass Transit (78,650 words) delves into the jumbled emotions of an overzealous hunter and the pursued. Non-stop tension and action intertwine through New York City’s streets and subway tunnels. Like a roaring train, it races and gains speed until the supernatural ending collides with reality. Birdie, a former stage actress with a hair-trigger temper, has hit bottom, living in a rundown boat yard in Brooklyn when a prominent Broadway producer calls. Instead of a performing role, he offers her a case. His daughter has been savagely murdered.bobjoswick.com | 2022-08-30 14:57:10 | |
| Sam Murray | A Darling Obsession | Fulton Books | In 1899, an unspeakable crime was committed by a mob in the town of Guinevere Beach, Florida. Eighty or so years later, someone reopens a long-closed hotel on the site of the crime. The city, now called Sandy Beach, has a history of violence; some say it's a curse. But Detective Robert Justice begins to see a pattern when he connects horrifying deeds to the hotel. His investigation uncovers not just murders that span decades but the haunted source of the evil that visits Sandy Beach and its residents, leaving a trail of bodies and broken lives in its wake.amazon.com/darling-obsession-s-r-murray/… | 2022-08-30 12:54:40 | |
| Lisa Hanawalt | Tuca & Bertie Season 3 | Warner Brothers? | I think Season 3 is the best yet, and I'm not ready to single out an individual episode. It's available on Adult Swim and HBO Max. It covers lots of feminist themes and you can't say these bird women and plant people (who date!) don't expand gender in weird ways! The world-building is also nice and bizarre. Content warning for CSA, mostly in the first season. | 2022-08-29 18:05:10 | |
| Leanbh Pearson | Bluebells | Black Hare Press | 1917, Australia. In the aftermath of an alternate ending to the First World War, mass frontline casualties and a mysterious pandemic have decimated governments and the environment across much of Europe and the world, Australia included. Anna Baylon lives with her parents, scraping a meagre living in the drought-ridden, abandoned, and mostly isolated town of Berrima near Sydney, waiting for news of her older brother, Peter, who enlisted years before. The arrival of a handsome, mysterious stranger, Nicolas de Laon, her brother’s lover, turns her world upside down. Anna’s strength is tested when she follows Nicolas—a vampire—from the safety of her home, determined to learn Peter’s fate. But Nicolas’s darkness isn’t confined to his vampiric hereditary. And when Anna learns the darker truth, can she forgive him?readerlinks.com/l/2477946 | 2022-08-25 08:01:40 | |
| H. Pueyo | A Study in Ugliness & Outras Histórias | Lethe Press | Bilingual collection of Latin American dark speculative fiction. Comes out in October 2022, I received an ARC.lethepressbooks.com/store/p661/study_in_… | 2022-08-19 10:29:52 | |
| Melanie Kallas | Liquid Fire | Acute by Design Publishing | Liquid Fire is about transforming the human body, and thereby the world. The characters are torn between two courses of action: passion on the one hand and duty on the other. Their philosophical outlooks of the world are changed based on these actions. Set a hundred years in the future, the world suffers from a dangerous rise in sea levels, and many cities have fallen beneath the waves. Sustainable societies have created new technologies to offset this crisis, including cold water reactors and dirigibles that glide on the jet streams. Young academy graduates struggle with their developing abilities as a mysterious, technologically advanced intruder attacks their home. Duty will call some to fight; passion will force others to choose a new path.acutebydesign.com/product-page/liquid-fi… | 2022-08-07 16:21:52 | |
| Natalia Theodoridou | Ribbons | Uncanny Magazine | uncannymagazine.com/article/ribbons/ | 2022-07-29 12:41:39 | |
| Peg Tittle | Gender Fraud: a fiction | Magenta | In a near-future, 'gender recognition' legislation is repealed, and it becomes illegal for males to identify as females and females to identify as males. However, due in part to the continued conflation of sex and gender and in part to the insistence that gender align with sex, it also becomes illegal for males to be feminine and females to be masculine. Gender Fraud: a fiction tells the story of Kat, a sixty-two year-old woman who is arrested for gender fraud; interjections of social media chats provide context and enrichment. A gender identity dystopia.pegtittle.com/books/gender-fraud | 2022-07-05 05:37:57 | |
| Petra Kuppers | Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters | University of Minnesota Press | In Eco Soma, Petra Kuppers asks readers to be alert to their own embodied responses to art practice and to pay attention to themselves as active participants in a shared sociocultural world. Reading contemporary performance encounters and artful engagements, this book models a disability culture sensitivity to living in a shared world, oriented toward more socially just futures. Kuppers invites us to become moths, sprout gills, listen to our heart’s drum, and take starships into crip time. And fantasy is central to these engagements: feeling/sensing monsters, catastrophes, golden lines, heartbeats, injured sharks, dotted salamanders, kissing mammoths, and more. Kuppers illuminates ecopoetic disability culture perspectives, contending that disabled people and their co-conspirators make art to live in a changing world, in contact with feminist, queer, trans, racialized, and Indigenous art projects.manifold.umn.edu/projects/eco-soma | 2022-06-04 16:32:02 | |
| Massoud Hayoun | Last Night in Brighton | Darf Publishers Ltd | Sam Saadoun is an Arab American gay man who time travels and arrives in his family's home in Alexandria, Egypt of the 1930s where he is, rather startlingly, a woman. There, she must suddenly navigate her family's gender roles in order to speak with a long-dead parent. In a parallel storyline in present-day Brooklyn, she is still the man he thought himself to be, and he must navigate several kinds of homophobia - systemic, legal, and internalised.lastnightinbrighton.com | 2022-05-30 20:01:54 | |
| Tim Sussman | Unfinished Business | Argyll Productions https://argyllproductions.com/ | I have read and recommended Mr. Sussman's works for consideration previously and recieved early copies of this work before it was ready for publication due to my support for Kyell Gold, SofaWolf Press, and FurPlanet.argyllproductions.com/product/unfinished… | 2022-05-28 02:37:17 | |
| Ginny Priem | You're My Favorite | Rodney K Press | amazon.com/youre-my-favorite-ginny-priem… | 2022-05-25 03:59:17 | |
| O.E. Tearmann | Deuces Are Wild | Amphibian Press | Hi there! This is the sixth book in this series, but the entire Aces High, Jokers Wild series creates a world where people from all groups can hope for a better future when everything feels bleak. Many of the characters explore gender and sexuality and I believe this will be a perfect fit for Otherwise! | 2022-05-12 08:02:50 | |
| Karuna Das | Kat's Cradle | DX Varos Publishing, Inc. | With several smart and strong women among its ensemble of POV characters of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, ages, and sexual identities, the book offers a multifaceted vision of humanity with a decidedly feminist thrust, exploring gender in terms of conventional and unconventional roles and relationships alike. By the time the story concludes, readers have followed the protagonist and those who interact with her on a journey that expands their notions of identity -- both individually and collectively -- and provokes them to reconsider their own place in contemporary American culture as well as in much broader cosmic contexts. dxvaros.com/books/kat's-cradle%3a-webolu… | 2022-05-09 06:01:33 | |
| John Elizabeth Stintzi | My Volcano | Two Dollar Radio | Non-binary writer and visual artist John Elizabeth Stintzi's novel "My Volcano" is an ambitious, kaleidoscopic portrait of a diverse cast of characters each grappling with immense personal "eruptions" as well as our collective experience of our changing Earth. The story opens with a massive volcano emerging from the middle of New York City's Central Park. Parable, myth, sci-fi, eco-horror, "My Volcano" features a plethora of dazzling imaginative elements punctuated with real-life atrocities such as the murders of trans women of color. Queer becoming, bodily transformations, experiencing discomfort in one's own body, changes of gender, the multiple versions of the self being present at the same point in time — these are just some of the ways in which this novel explores notions of gender, and how we live together in this world.twodollarradio.com/products/my-volcano | 2022-05-06 10:04:50 | |
| Erika Malinoski | Pledging Season | This novel challenges the idea that sexism, patriarchy, and transphobia are in any way “natural” outgrowths of biology. It does this by creating a world (on a space colony of Earth’s) where different cultures use the exact same human biology we have now to justify completely different definitions of gender (everything from the number of genders to their organization to their fluidity) as well as different gender-based power structures. Within this framework, the book explores what the struggle for gender justice would look like, what it means to be cisgender in such a place, and how to transform patriarchal ideas of justice and punishment into a more restorative world. In doing so, it exposes the arbitrariness of the gender binary and makes a powerful case for solidarity across all genders. Reviewers describe it as “an emotionally rich, page-turning read…”eemauthor.com/pledging-season-serializat… | 2022-04-29 12:01:28 | ||
| Catori Sarmiento | Darkness in a Sky of Embers | Three Ravens Publishing | amazon.com/darkness-sky-embers-catori-sa… | 2022-04-28 14:07:52 | |
| Rivers Solomon | Sorrowland | MCD | So much of Sorrowland is about a young woman contemplating the contradictions of gender, especially as she raises her two children, who she refuses to gender in any way - not revealing their assigned sex at birth to anyone or ever referring to them as her daughters or sons. This is but one facet of the way gender is explored. mcdbooks.com/books/sorrowland | 2022-04-19 03:44:51 | |
| Edale Lane | Walks with Spirits | Past and Prologue Press | This historical novel features a love story between two indigenous women set way long ago and incorporates a lot of spirituality. I find it refreshingly different from most LGBTQ fiction. amazon.com/dp/b09vbgqf27/ | 2022-03-27 13:34:44 | |
| Julie Bozza, editor Various | Queer Weird West Tales | https://juliebozza.com/news-queer-weird-west-tales-anthology-2/amazon.com/queer-weird-tales-julie-bozza… | 2022-03-27 00:05:50 | ||
| Martha Wells | Fugitive Telemetry | Tor.com | The entire Murderbot series by Martha Wells is amazing. Not only are they told from the point of view of a nonhuman intelligence who has no gender, they take place in a gender-fluid society where family units often involve multiple partners, where there is at least one additional gender (tercera; pronouns are te / ter), all as a completely matter-of-fact part of the storyline. publishing.tor.com/fugitivetelemetry-mar… | 2022-02-19 16:14:04 | |
| Talulah J. Sullivan | Blood Indigo | Forest Path Books | The first in an Indigenous literary fantasy series by an "own voice" author, BLOOD INDIGO introduces: --a dwindling cabal of shamans who defend their sentient world against a colony of aliens that are trying to regain control of a bio-engineering experiment run amok --a colonial bid that--almost--failed, and the often insidious consequences of cultures in conflict --tribes and clans that are not monolithic, but speak with their own voices --an overall culture, neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, where women, men, and two-spirited persons have place according to their abilities, and the fluidity of gender is acknowledged. Young people are expected to have same-gender relationships, which evolve and adapt as they mature and have families, often polyamorous --a book that asks the reader to think and question, to feel and experience new conceptsforestpathbooks.com | 2022-02-18 11:03:23 | |
| Eugen Bacon | Chasing Whispers | Raw Dog Screaming Press | Chasing Whispers is a unique Afro-irrealist collection of black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, longing, hybridity, unlimited futures, a collision of worlds and folklore. It casts a gaze at mostly women and children haunted by patriarchy, in stories packed with affection, dread, anguish and hope. The connecting theme is a black protagonist with a deep longing for someone, someplace, something… and a recurring phrase in each story: “a deep and terrible sadness.” This is a boundary stretching collection that doesn’t just describe the disjointed modern experience of minorities but makes you feel it.rawdogscreaming.com/books/chasing-whispe… | 2022-02-17 07:52:09 | |
| Megan Milks | Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body | Feminist Press | feministpress.org/books-a-m/margaret-and… | 2022-02-16 10:40:06 | |
| Blue Delliquanti | Across a Field of Starlight | Random House Graphic | 2022-02-16 02:08:56 | ||
| Eugen Bacon | Mage of Fools | Meerkat Press | A mother's story. A secret story machine. In the dystopian world of Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator’s sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution. An Afrofuturistic dystopian novel. meerkatpress.com/books/mage-of-fools/ | 2022-02-16 01:56:26 | |
| Valentine Carter | These Great Athenians | Nobrow | I'd like to submit this book as it appeals to everyone who identifies as a woman, no matter what – trans women who are just really starting out on that journey, right at the beginning and haven’t told anybody, a woman that’s been married to the same man for forty years and had eight children who are all boys, or anyone across the spectrum. Anyone can find a home in this book. | 2022-02-15 11:20:02 | |
| Joris Bas Backer | Kisses for Jet | Nobrow | “A warm, funny, lived-in book that captures exactly the feeling of having a desire you just can’t place, and the relief when you manage to crack it wide open.” — Mattie Lubchansky, The Nib “Exciting from the first to the last page! I say, this book is already a classic.” — Ulli Lust, author of Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life | 2022-02-15 10:36:04 | |
| Jessy Randall | Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science | Gold SF (University of London) | Poems about women you’ve heard of (Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Émilie du Châtelet) and women you might not know (Alice Ball, Maryam Mirzakhani, Ynes Mexia, Susan La Flesche Picotte, Chien-Shiung Wu). A wickedly funny and feminist take on the lives and work of women who resisted their parents, their governments, the rules and conventions of their times, and sometimes situations as simple and infuriating as a lack of a women’s bathroom in a science building on a college campus. With a preface by Pippa Goldschmidt and illustrations by Kristin DiVona of NASA’s Reaching Across the Stars. "The only good science fiction poems ever written are by Jessy Randall. —Annalee Newitz "I never get tired of learning about women who achieved great things despite obstacles." — Katha Pollitt https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/mathematics-ladiespersonalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jranda… | 2022-02-15 10:06:19 | |
| Ava KellyIllustrated by Matthew Spencer | Alia Terra: Stories from the Dragon Realm | Atthis Arts | This all-ages, fully-illustrated, dual-language, aromantic, nonbinary book centers on kindness and self-acceptance. Please see the site for a recommendation / blurb by Bogi Takács.atthisarts.com/product/alia-terra | 2022-02-15 09:36:43 | |
| Cynthia Zhang | After the Dragons | Stelliform Press | Queer love, dragons, and climate change in Beijing. This book is a fascinating exploration of the complex demands culture makes of feeling and expression of feeling, and how that demand evolves in the context of an unstable climate.stelliform.press/index.php/cynthia-zhang… | 2022-02-13 16:47:06 | |
| Suyi Davies Okungbowa | Son of the Storm | Orbit Books | In exploring or expanding upon existing notions of gender, Son of the Storm excels in three areas: (1) Demonstrating the role of women in society, through the actions and achievements of its man and supporting cast, which is predominantly female; (2) Presenting characters outside of the gender binary, and allowing them to exist as full humans beyond just their identity; and (3) Presenting many of its female characters in leadership roles and, again, allowing them be full humans: making mistakes, as well as making good decisions. This book, which at its core is about the power of stories, debunks many of the myths around the capabilities of women in society--especially in the pre-colonial West African societies it is drawn from.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/suyi-davies… | 2022-02-10 05:19:27 | |
| Murray LeeAngela Yuriko SmithChristina SngGeneve Flynn | Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken | Yuriko Publishing | Tortured Willows is a poetry collection by four Asian women authors. It is the companion piece to Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, which won the 2020 Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards for superior achievement in an anthology. The collection explores themes of otherness, race, and gender. Tortured Willows is on the preliminary ballot for the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in a poetry collection. amazon.com/tortured-willows-bent-bowed-u… | 2022-01-30 22:11:26 | |
| Kyle Jensen | The Chaos of Kyle | 2022-01-30 04:05:13 | |||
| Sahaj Sabharwal | Pedagogical Thoughts Made Facts | Bluerose Publishers | About the Book-: The BOOK-: ” Pedagogical Thoughts Made Facts ” is written by Sahaj Sabharwal. This book contains poetries, thoughts, quotes, stories and articles. In this book, most of the write ups are based on real life experiences and today’s thoughts written by Sahaj are future facts for others which really motivates. Moreover, this book contains writings which are based on social issues for awareness and for positive mindset. Every single piece of writing in this book contains a deep meaning, if you could relate. PERSONALITY OF JAMMU, INDIA NAME: Sahaj Sabharwal Sahaj Sabharwal, a young writer and an author was born on 17th March, 2002. He lives in Jammu city, Jammu and Kashmir, India. He has completed his schooling from Dps Jammu as a Non-Medical student. Now he is a student of Aeronautical Engineering. | 2022-01-13 04:29:45 | |
| Ornella NgabireEmmanuel Ndayishimiye | The Smiley Girl | Self-published | I recommend to check out this book because it has won the 2nd place in the 2021 Reader’s Choice Awards by TCK publishing.It is a story of a little girl who inspires other children and their families to take action and keep up with daily random acts of kindness through a kindness calendar. There would not be anymore bullying, hate or lack of self esteem if every child thinks and says only kind things every single day. The story was short to keep the attention span of the targeted readers. The main character also teaches them how to plan and organize which is another strategy that should be taught to children.amazon.com/dp/b087fjhkxv/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_… | 2022-01-03 11:10:26 | |
| Starscribe | Child of Mine | Self-published | Starscribe completed this fantasy story and published it in January of 2021. Child of Mine explores gender roles like few stories I've read, touching on what it means to be transformed into something completely unimaginable and to be transformed by unimagined love. It's visceral strength lies in that it never shirks its responsibility to address the gory and embarrassing details of maternity. That the once male character faces a choice of returning to himself and the loss of the child-parent bond that has grown through the ordeals he has suffered and lived through, displays the depth of the human heart—regardless of the constraints of gender. This is also a fan fiction, and from a franchise that was unfortunately made controversial in the SF&F community. I think it transcends this impediment. I am a SFWA member. fimfiction.net/story/453619/child-of-min… | 2021-12-25 13:20:47 | |
| C. A. McDonald | A Woven Womb | in Dispatches from Anarres, Forest Avenue Press | A brilliant vision of parenting and family-making. | 2021-12-20 09:30:05 |