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.
The Additional Comments field is optional, but we recommend saying something in that field about the ways in which the work explores and expands our understanding of gender.
Recommendations for this year’s award close December 31, 2023. 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 2023 Otherwise Award will be given in 2024, 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 2023 Otherwise Award Recommendations
| Author | Title | Publisher | Comments | Sub Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H.E. Edgmon | Godly Heathens | Macmillan Publishers | us.macmillan.com/books/9781250853615/god… | 2024-10-29 07:40:20 | |
| Cherie Dimaline | Funeral Songs for Dying Girls | 2024-10-03 17:11:34 | |||
| Cherie Dimaline | VenCo | 2024-10-03 17:09:53 | |||
| adrienne maree brown | Maroons | AK Press | 2024-09-25 10:47:40 | ||
| Q Turner | Blood Sacrifice | Blood Sacrifice follows three voices, including two strong female leads, and explores class inequality, revolution, and sexuality in a world where androids often replace people for sexual needs. The book features a bold trans character who stands up for her oppressed people (the Ishti) and serves as a powerful voice throughout the story. If you enjoy thought-provoking, character-driven dystopian fiction, Blood Sacrifice is a must-read.amazon.com/dp/b0cntx9rsf | 2024-09-23 08:52:50 | ||
| Mari Ness | Carnival Ever After | Apex Magazine | apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/carnival… | 2024-09-17 19:58:09 | |
| Bethany Jacobs | These Burning Stars | Orbit | This fabulous novel has unforgettable characters, a queernormative world, and a twisty plot. Fabulous read! | 2024-09-01 07:32:20 | |
| Anna-Marie McLemoreElliott McLemore | Venom & Vow | Feiwel & Friends | Venom & Vow is an enchanting story, told from two points of view: Valencia, who sometimes appears as female, but sometimes as male; and Cade, a prince of a neighboring kingdom who was assigned as female at birth. Their parents are under a mysterious curse which each believes the other to have cast; their homelands are in an ongoing struggle for dominance; Cade is forced to impersonate his brother, who is uninterested in ruling and falls prey to the machinations of a scheming cousin. Oh, and Valencia’s best friend, the princess, is engaged to Cade’s brother. | 2023-12-31 17:00:37 | |
| Emily Tesh | Some Desperate Glory | Tor.com | All her life Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the all-powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the Majoda their victory over humanity. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is award-winning author Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel. | 2023-12-31 14:17:35 | |
| Cadwell Turnbull | We are the Crisis | Blackstone | In We Are the Crisis—the second book in the Convergence Saga from award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull—humans and monsters come into conflict in a magical and dangerous world as civil rights collide with preternatural forces. | 2023-12-31 14:13:44 | |
| Aubrey Wood | Bang Bang Bodhisattva | Solaris | A cyberpunk noir whodunit thriller with a trans protagonist and an ace protagonist, shitty violent cops and a capitalism-continued-getting-worse increasingly-fascist near-future. The author described it in an interview with Fantasy Hive as: “Bang Bang Bodhisattva is a queer-cyberpunk-noir-buddy-comedy-murder-mystery about a cringefail trans girl hacker, a Humphrey Bogart cosplayer, and the friends they make along the way. You will either completely love it or you will feverishly hate it.” | 2023-12-31 12:36:25 | |
| Andrew Joseph White | The Spirit Bears its Teeth | Penguin Random House | Dedicated to “the kids with open wounds they’re still looking to stich closed”, Andrew Joseph White describes himself as writing “about trans kids with claws and fangs, and what happens when they bite back”. In his note about content warnings, he says this a book about misogyny, transphobia, and ableism from the perspective of an autistic transgender boy. It has a thematic focus on the violent enforcement of gender roles and Victorian-era psychiatry as tools of oppression. London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.andrewjosephwhite.com/the-spirit-bares-i… | 2023-12-31 12:11:13 | |
| Deya Muniz | The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich | Little, Brown Ink | Graphic novel romcom. A young woman disguised as a man. An activist princess. Lots of cheese. It plays with the tropes and has fun, without sticking very rigidly to fantasy or fairy tale rules. I think the jury will have fun reading it. | 2023-12-31 11:10:50 | |
| Leanbh Pearson | “An Unnatural Woman” | Nightmare Fuel Magazine | Published online as part of “Don’t Let Them In”. A dark historical reimagining of witchcraft fear throughout history focused on New England, USA region. The fear of independent, knowledgeable women, healers and midwives. Misogyny and persecution of women who didn’t fit the idealised woman.nightmarefuelmagazine.com/2023/05/16/an-… | 2023-12-30 20:46:22 | |
| Emily H. Wilson | Inanna | Titan Books | A retelling of one of the oldest surviving works of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, that focuses on the lesser known story and perspective of Inanna, the goddess of love. | 2023-12-29 13:10:10 | |
| Genevieve Gornichec | The Weaver and the Witch Queen | Titan Books | Historical fantasy set in tenth century Norway, in which Oddny and Gunnhild meet as young girls with very different desires for their futures - Oddny hopes for a quiet life, while Gunnhild burns for power and longs to escape her cruel mother. As they grow older, the bonds that hold the two women together are strong, and when they find their way back to each other, they're tested in ways they never could have foreseen in this deeply moving novel of magic, history, and sworn sisterhood. | 2023-12-29 13:06:07 | |
| Courtney Smyth | The Undetectables | Titan Books | Fantasy murder mystery about a detective agency run by three witches and a ghost in a cat costume, with a cast of queer characters and themes of found families and queer friendship and community. | 2023-12-29 13:01:08 | |
| G.R. Macallister | Arca | Titan Books | The second book in an epic fantasy series that explores a matriarchal society of Five Queendoms, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered when a decade passes without a single girl being born. In this second book in the series, a queen vows to make her son the nation's first ruling King or die trying. | 2023-12-29 12:57:28 | |
| AJ Glasser | Witch King's Oath | AJ Glasser | Reminiscent of the Tamir Triad by Lynn Flewelling, and yet entirely its own unique tale of witchcraft and wizardry, Witch King’s Oath explores the story of a woman cursed to grow up in a man’s body, never feeling quite right about him/herself, yet never understanding why.goodreads.com/book/show/182104326-witch-… | 2023-12-29 12:11:31 | |
| Heather O'Malley | Hands of the Morri | Bold Strokes Books | Not only does O’Malley address the gender issue, but she makes it significant without falling into the trap of making this a story about gender. I loved the idea of Lost Sisters, the aspect of being touched by the Goddess, and loved even more that transwomen like Asche were wholly accepted and embraced by the Hands. That simplicity speaks volumes.goodreads.com/book/show/125549788-hands-… | 2023-12-29 12:08:25 | |
| Leanbh PearsonEdited by J.S. Breukelaar | “The Carnival Girl” | Australasian Horror Writers Association | Midnight Echo 18: CURSED. The official magazine of the Australasian Horror Writers Association, featuring short fiction, poetry and non-fiction from some of Australasia's best writers of dark fiction. “Carnival Girl” winner of 2022 AHWA Robert N Stephenson Flash Fiction Award. A dark dystopian fantasy exploring gender, LGBTQI persecution.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/b0cl8fz8lp/ | 2023-12-28 21:28:38 | |
| Julianna Baggott | The Wick | Underland Press | SF novella that explores the relationship between being and machine. Roon is a cacheme, an organic human born of inorganic human extravagance. Her memory erased, she has only one clue to her past: her name. No longer of use to the people who created her, she wakes up in a glass box in a room full of girls in glass boxes, far away from the people and places that formed her identity, her past. Bukef is a hull—part-beast, part-war-machine. Hulls are built to bond with soldiers, their wicks, for life. But as Bukef and Roon search for sanctuary, they find something in each other that shows them a path toward self-reliance and self-determination. underlandpress.com/wick.php | 2023-12-28 08:55:50 | |
| Ember Randall | Notes from a trans-inclusive gender apocalypse | Cast of Wonders | There are many stories that explore gender- and sex-based apocalypse scenarios, but this one explores it properly, with an understanding of the real nuances of gender.castofwonders.org/2023/02/cast-of-wonder… | 2023-12-28 07:31:35 | |
| Riley Tao | Both Hope and Breath | Cast of Wonders | A touching story of social transition and friendship in the face of an unsupportive familycastofwonders.org/2023/02/cast-of-wonder… | 2023-12-28 07:29:06 | |
| Stewart C Baker | Magic Dad's Cookie Bites | Cosmorama | cosmoramaofficial.com/fiction/magic-dads… | 2023-12-27 10:31:08 | |
| Chinelo Onwualu | Ex Marginalia: Essays from the Edges of Speculative Fiction | Hydra House Books | While speculative fiction is justly lauded for its progressive ideas and ideals, it has too often and for too long failed to include the voices of those who aren’t white or cis male. With the dawn of the 21st century, however, marginalized groups have challenged the genre’s status quo with renewed vigor—forging, reimagining, and expanding new paths—to take their rightful place in the field. But the work is not done. Edited by Chinelo Onwualu, Hydra House Books introduces Ex Marginalia, a collection of essays by writers from identities routinely excluded or ignored by the speculative fiction community. These voices are vital to the present and the future of the genre. And they cannot—will not—remain any longer in the margins. A portion of the proceeds from sales of Ex Marginalia will benefit the Carl Brandon Society.hydrahousebooks.com/catalog/ex-marginali… | 2023-12-27 09:55:52 | |
| Natalia Theodoridou | Love at the Event Horizon | Uncanny Magazine | A transmasculine protagonist, queer love, grief and hope in space, against the background of decomposing films. uncannymagazine.com/article/love-at-the-… | 2023-12-27 08:34:10 | |
| Raine Rillera | A Symphony of Suns(The First Movement) | 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing | The novella "A Symphony of Suns: The First Movement" imagines the beginnings and growing pains of such a solar-punk society and how darkness can still lurk beneath the brilliance of three suns. 8lettersbooks.com/shop/symphony-of-suns-… | 2023-12-27 05:29:58 | |
| Holly Lyn Walrath | Bone Light | Tenebrous Press | An icy surf batters Bone Light as its beacon calls to weary souls at sea. This edifice built of bone and wretchedness sits atop a cursed rock, surrounded by death, watched over by the ghosts of light-keepers past. Their records tell of the inhospitable environment, but it is Mary Long’s writings that show the heart. Misfortune necessitates the arrival of her dear Ida, laying bear to the obstacles that shaped their history—a husband and taboo among them. These log entries illuminate Mary’s world—the banality, the heartbreak, the magic. In “Bone Light,” a beacon of death might finally be the thing to give life to a long-denied romance.tenebrouspress.com/blog/2023/11/1/split-… | 2023-12-26 18:55:12 | |
| Emily Wynne | Princess of the Pomegranate Moon | Balance of Seven | barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144388726 | 2023-12-25 10:32:43 | |
| Shelley Parker-Chan | He Who Drowned the World | Tor | An exploration of the performance of gender, desire and power by queer (genderfluid, gender nonconforming, trans, same-sex attracted) and marginalised individuals within the strict patriarchy of imperial China, ending with an alternate ending to the real history of the period in which a genderfluid character becomes emperor and brings a more inclusive world into being | 2023-12-24 14:55:34 | |
| Jared Shurin (editor)KC AlexanderCandas Jane DorseyIsabel FallEileen GunnGwyneth JonesJames Tiptree JrM. Lopes da SilvaMishaSunny MoraineJanelle MonaeAlaya Dawn JohnsonJustina Robsonand many others | The Big Book of Cyberpunk | Vintage | Massive and far-ranging book on the controversial genre, with a focus on demonstrating the role of previously excluded or marginalised communities in building and maintaining the movement. Also links cyberpunk specifically to the science fiction of identity and culture, with stories that demonstrate how literature helps us understand, accept and forge forward | 2023-12-24 06:46:00 | |
| Ava Kelly | Take Your Seat | Take Your Seat is a speculative story published in Transoughts, a special edition (#25) of the Konstruksjon zine, in Bergen, Norway, on 22 May 2023. The issue compiles texts and artwork from a group of transgender and nonbinary writers and artists. The story was performed live during the event Prøverommet at Bergen Assembly and is accompanied by a visual piece (digital painting mixed with photography). | 2023-12-24 04:47:41 | ||
| Kes Otter Lieffe | home is a verb | Active distribution | In a shifting world, marginalised characters must face their traumas and embrace change. In their search for healing, they are brought together, finding home in the least expected of places. Written from a transfeminine, working-class, and chronically ill perspective, this new novel from ecologist, Kes Otter Lieffe explores burnout and despair, collective collapse and recovery. The first-person narrative allows an exploration of the narrator / protagonist's embodied and socialised experiences of gender, while avoiding the diversion of imposing third person labels. The story centres on trans and non-binary characters, with all their complexities and struggles for survival in a transphobic world. Through Sasu, an animist cant slang, a community at the edge rediscover their connections to each other and to the living world they belong to. otterlieffe.com/fiction | 2023-12-24 02:23:36 | |
| J.A.W. McCarthy | The Only Thing Different Will Be the Body | A Woman Built by Man (anthology) | pseudopod.org/2022/11/18/pseudopod-839-t… | 2023-12-23 14:20:48 | |
| Shanna Heath | Miss Infection USA | Other Terrors (anthology) | Exploring the fetishization and exploitation of beauty pageants in a postapocalyptic zombie future.harpercollins.com/products/other-terrors… | 2023-12-23 14:19:24 | |
| Leanna Renee Hieber Andrea Janes | A Haunted History of Invisible Women | Citadel Press | From the notorious Lizzie Borden to the innumerable, haunted rooms of Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion this offbeat, insightful, first-ever book of its kind explores the history behind America's female ghosts, the stereotypes, myths, and paranormal tales that swirl around them, what their stories reveal about us—and why they haunt us.kensingtonbooks.com/9780806541594/a-haun… | 2023-12-23 14:16:29 | |
| Lisa KrogerMelanie Anderson | Toil and Trouble | Quirk | A celebration of magical women and nonbinary people in American history, from Salem to WitchTok.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690801/toil… | 2023-12-23 14:14:45 | |
| R.J. Joseph | Hell Hath No Sorrow like a Woman Haunted | The Seventh Terrace | showcasing myriad aspects of the Black female experiencepublishersweekly.com/asinb09ytrvny8 | 2023-12-23 14:10:49 | |
| Ariel Marken Jack | The Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things | PseudoPod | The internal and external prison walls of abusive relationships.pseudopod.org/2022/04/22/pseudopod-807-t… | 2023-12-23 14:08:21 | |
| Shannyn Campbell | Taxiptómy | PseudoPod | The fetishization and exploitation of women in art.pseudopod.org/2022/09/16/pseudopod-828-t… | 2023-12-23 14:06:34 | |
| S.H. CooperElle Turpitt | A Woman Built By Man | Cemetery Gates Media | A Woman Built By Man is a collage of 21 horror tales that seek to crawl under the skin and deconstruct the many ways women are built up and broken down by a patriarchal society. And the many ways they’re finally saying, “Enough.” https://pseudopod.org/2022/11/18/pseudopod-839-the-only-thing-different-will-be-the-body/cemeterygatesmedia.com/2022/02/11/a-woma… | 2023-12-23 14:03:53 | |
| Lee MurrayAngela Yuriko Smith | Unquiet Spirits | Black Spot Books | Essays by Asian Women in Horror. From hungry ghosts, vampiric babies, and shapeshifting fox spirits to the avenging White Lady of urban legend, for generations, Asian women’s roles have been shaped and defined through myth and story. In Unquiet Spirits, Asian writers of horror reflect on the impact of superstition, spirits, and the supernatural in this unique collection of 21 personal essays exploring themes of otherness, identity, expectation, duty, and loss, and leading, ultimately, to understanding and empowerment.leemurray.info/unquietspirits | 2023-12-23 13:54:54 | |
| Donyae Coles | The Ascension of Magdeline | Nightmare Magazine | nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-ascen… | 2023-12-23 13:51:35 | |
| Chuck Tingle | Camp Damascus | Tor Nightfire | YA novel that follows kids that have been through the Camp Damascus program that has a touted 100% success rate for conversion therapy.us.macmillan.com/books/9781250874627/cam… | 2023-12-23 13:47:36 | |
| Jessi Ann York | Dimorphism | Seasons of Severance, Cemetery Gates Media | Explores cannibalism during motherhood and genetic modification in males to prevent consumption during mating.cemeterygatesmedia.com/2023/03/19/season… | 2023-12-23 13:42:56 | |
| Kelsea Yu | Wanted: Bone-White Skull-Patterned Lace Trim | PseudoPod | Explores the internal and external expectations society sets on motherhood.pseudopod.org/2023/05/14/pseudopod-865-w… | 2023-12-23 13:39:49 | |
| Cynthia Zhang | We, the Ones Who Raised Sam Gowers from the Dead | PseudoPod | Explores the anger that swirls around trans rightspseudopod.org/2023/03/31/pseudopod-859-w… | 2023-12-23 13:38:16 | |
| Jess Whitecroft | Of Dark That Bites | PseudoPod | pseudopod.org/2023/03/17/pseudopod-857-o… | 2023-12-23 13:35:24 | |
| Geoff Ryman | HIM | Angry Robot Books | An alternate history SF novel that examines what it would mean if Mary of Nazareth had given birth to a girl rather than a boy. Her child, Avigail soon identifies as male to become "the Son of Adam". The book investigates gender and belief.amazon.co.uk/him-geoff-ryman/dp/19152026… | 2023-12-23 06:45:27 | |
| Wendy Palmer | Fair Haven | Winterbourne Publishing | Hazel lives a comfortable life in Haven, a stronghold with its very own Mancer, a highly-prized magical engineer. But when a runaway Mancer pleads for sanctuary, zhey bring the threat of invasion in zheir wake. Ash is disruptive to Hazel's peaceful routine in more ways than one. Could this be the start of something precious...or the end of everything he holds dear? From review by AncientReader (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200353396-fair-haven): [The author] looooooooooooves to mess with gender. The Mancers are nonbinary; several of the characters are trans or anyway gender nonconforming (whatever that means when there are gender norms but no one in Fair Haven seems to have any interest in requiring anyone to abide by them), and their genders are treated as such a matter of fact that if you blink you'll miss the clues.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/fair-haven-2 | 2023-12-23 02:12:24 | |
| Aimee Ogden | Emergent Properties | Tor.com | 2023-12-23 01:18:19 | ||
| Veo Corva | The Beautiful Decay | Witch Key Fiction | amazon.com/beautiful-decay-tombtown-book… | 2023-12-22 19:50:14 | |
| Brenda Clough | A Deal in Her Pocket | Book View Cafe | A book about the balance of power and love. Star is the ruler of a country in Southeast Asia, and she has to figure out how to manage the expectations of her society and still achieve personal happiness. The solution may be intensely creative: to marry three guys.bookviewcafe.com/book/a-deal-in-her-pock… | 2023-12-22 19:43:02 | |
| Valerie Valdes | Where Peace Is Lost | Harper Voyager | 2023-12-22 19:33:26 | ||
| Nghi Vo | Mammoths at the Gates | Tordotcom | 2023-12-22 19:32:02 | ||
| Moniquill Blackgoose | To Shape a Dragon's Breath | Del Rey | A young Indigenous woman enters a colonizer-run dragon academy—and quickly finds herself at odds with the “approved” way of doing things—in the first book of this brilliant new fantasy series. The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations—until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all remember the tales of the days when dragons lived among them and danced away the storms of autumn, enabling the people to thrive. To them, Anequs is revered as Nampeshiweisit—a person in a unique relationship with a dragon. | 2023-12-22 19:30:25 | |
| Kate Elliott | The Keeper's Six | Tordotcom | 2023-12-22 19:27:51 | ||
| K.B. Wagers | Ghosts of Trappist | Harper Voyager | 2023-12-22 19:25:31 | ||
| Annalee Newitz | The Terraformers | Tor Books | 2023-12-22 19:23:26 | ||
| Eugen Bacon | The Devil Don’t Come With Horns | HarperCollins Publishers | Published in Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, HarperCollins Publishers, July 2022, Edited by By Vince A. Liaguno, Rena Mason. A child discovers in a hard way that not every 'other' is a devil. harpercollins.com/products/other-terrors… | 2023-12-22 17:43:38 | |
| Eugen Bacon | Human Beans | European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media | Published in Life Beyond Us, an anthology by the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media, edited by Julie Nováková and Lucas Law. 'Human Beans' is a short story about belonging, feeling displaced, unnoticed, from the eyes of protagonist Wema. It's about the existence of another Earth—what if higher beings understood a solution to our current Earth’s problems (war, poverty, climate change, disease…) and could introduce us to a Super Earth in a different dimension? europeanastrobiology.eu/life-beyond-us/ | 2023-12-22 17:36:39 | |
| Eugen Bacon | Sina, the Child With No Echo | Android Press | Themes: ‘Othering’. Longing and belonging, engaging with difference. The unexpected hero/ine. The story of a family that finds itself. In Ekwukwe, the hollow planet, a child is born without an echo. Sina is abandoned as a baby at the edge of the desert forest, but none of the creatures can sense him, because he has no echo. His childless aunt Zawa-Zawa, who is a keeper of knowledge and also a member of the federation of planets, rescues him and raises him as her own. Being without echo turns out to be a gift. Sina becomes a skilled beast hunter, until he meets his match in the carnivorous Impudu-pudu, ultrasensitive to echo and vibration. To outwit the beast, he must join forces with his estranged birth sister Rehema’re—who is gifted with magical echo.android-press.com/product-page/mothersou… | 2023-12-22 17:24:52 | |
| Eugen Bacon | Serengotti | Transit Lounge Publishing | Themes: Writing the ‘other’, betwixt, queer, love, betrayal, superstition, African spirituality, ghost story, magical realism. In the one tumultuous day, Ch’anzu loses hir job and finds wife Scarlet in bed with a stranger. As life unexpectedly spirals out of control, Ch’anzu turns to charismatic Aunt Maé for comfort and wisdom, and makes the bold move to work on a project in Serengotti, a migrant African outpost in rural Australia. In a novel haunted by the strangeness and yearnings of a displaced community – both beautiful and fractured – Ch’anzu is forced to confront hir many demons. This is a novel bathed in sensuous, original language, a love letter to the strong women who bind families together despite everything. It’s also a tender remembrance of the many who haven’t or couldn’t survive the dislocations and tragedies of their turbulent pasts.transitlounge.com.au/shop/serengotti/ | 2023-12-22 17:15:21 | |
| Ruth Joffre | A Girl Defines Herself | Nightmare | A story that riffs off the fact that the OED lists the etymology of the word "girl" as "origin unknown" to tell an empowering story about a girl who is also an ancient flesh-eating demon.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/a-girl-de… | 2023-12-22 17:08:43 | |
| Iori Kusano | Hybrid Heart | Neon Hemlock | "A near-future but all too contemporary story of how young women are exploited and manipulated, this searing and ultimately hopeful story is an absorbing read." — Martha Wellsneonhemlock.com/books/hybrid-heart-by-io… | 2023-12-22 14:43:52 | |
| Nicola Griffith | Menewood | MCD | 2023-12-22 13:45:56 | ||
| Aurora Mattia | The Fifth Wound | Nightboat Books | “Featuring time travel, medieval nuns, knifings, and t4t romance, The Fifth Wound indulges the blur between fantasy and reality. Its winding sentences open like portals, inviting the reader into the intimacy of embodiment—both its pain and its pleasures.“nightboat.org/book/the-fifth-wound/ | 2023-12-22 13:30:49 | |
| Mika Horvath | Sharptooth | Pepperback Press, Inc. | Description of book: Sharptooth runs through the forest under the light of the moon and spends each day hiding from the sun in the burnt ruins of her family home. One night she braves the cobblestone streets of the nearby town and stumbles upon a silver-haired girl in a walled garden. Lyssa's parents couldn't stand to see her wither away, so they have left her with only a maid for company. She thinks her unusual new friend is just the thing to distract her in her final days...but Sharptooth has other plans. When Lyssa's parents return with a dangerous stranger, the girls will risk everything to seize control of their destinies and create a new future together.amazon.com/stores/author/b0b6stygng/allb… | 2023-12-22 13:05:07 | |
| Henry Hoke | Open Throat | MCD | 2023-12-22 13:02:50 | ||
| B. Pladek | Dry Land | University of Wisconsin Press | uwpress.wisc.edu/books/6180.htm | 2023-12-22 12:46:32 | |
| Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas | I Gave You a Key and You Opened the Darkness / I Gave You a Name and You Called the Darkness | IF not games | An interactive fiction piece about chosen names, belonging, memories, and returning to the family home after coming out. The reader/player has three different choices to make in the end: keeping their chosen name, re-appropriating their given name, or freeing themself of the burdens imposed by others.ifnotgames.com/huesos-del-cielo/intro_hu… | 2023-12-22 11:57:03 | |
| Em X. Liu | If Found, Return to Hell | Rebellion Publishing | Written in second person, the gender of our jaded protagonist is kept ambiguous throughout the entire story. It's not even like it's kept secret on purpose—it's just never directly relevant. I've seen comments online saying that some of the Chinese endearments used are masculine and some are feminine; I don't know Chinese so can't verify this myself. But it's the only use of gendered language around the protagonist, which I find an intriguing and remarkable feat of writing. In addition to all that, the story itself is heartwarming and funny and one of the best cozy fantasies I've read in a while. | 2023-12-22 11:55:57 | |
| JD Scott | The Selkie of the City Tells All | Fairy Tale Review — The Rainbow Issue | muse.jhu.edu/article/890390 | 2023-12-22 11:37:52 | |
| Martha Wells | System Collapse | Tordotcom | When I saw the casting for Murderbot and found myself outraged, I realized how important it had been to me that Murderbot has no gender. I think the use of a cyborg/machine with human components is an excellent way to show a non-gendered life, and Murderbot's bewilderment at all of the gendered clothing/assumptions/etc. helps us to see how oddly unintuitive and somewhat random our gender ideas are.us.macmillan.com/books/9781250826978/sys… | 2023-12-22 11:23:38 | |
| Sacha Lamb | When the Angels Left the Old Country | Levine querido | Fantasy | 2023-12-22 11:09:25 | |
| A.C. Wise | Death Is a Diner at 3:00 a.m. | The Deadlands | thedeadlands.com/issue-26/diner/ | 2023-12-22 11:03:13 | |
| Cedar McCloud | The Tale the Twines | Numinous Spirit Press | Several regions of this universe have no notions of gender, and it is contrasted with those who do, whether it's a strict binary or another set upnuminousspiritpress.com/thetalethattwine… | 2023-12-22 10:44:33 | |
| Martha Wells | The Witch King | Tordotcom | Main character is a bodyswaping demon whose apparent gender rarely aligns with his actual; lots of exploration of what various cultures consider masc/femme in fashion. Also, it'sujust a good read | 2023-12-22 10:41:11 | |
| Angel Leal | The Dead Boy Inside Me | The Deadlands | thedeadlands.com/issue-28/the-dead-boy/ | 2023-12-22 10:34:16 | |
| E.E. Cypher | Hollow Are the Bones | The Deadlands | thedeadlands.com/issue-31/hollow/ | 2023-12-22 10:31:39 | |
| Foz Meadows | All the Hidden Paths | Tor | Filled with action and intrigue, intricately plotted, vividly descriptive. Ralian-born Velasin vin Aaro is now Velasin Aeduria, after his arranged marriage to Caethani Aeduria, a Tithenai nobleman. Vel went from life in Ralia, where same-sex attraction is scorned, to Tithena, where it is fully accepted; he cares deeply for Cae while struggling to accept Cae's love for him. Features characters of a third gender with a full set of pronouns and relationship terms for that gender. | 2023-12-22 10:29:54 | |
| V.M. Ayala | Emotional Resonance | Escape Pod | Two trans characters forced into a mechanical life of servitude and warfare, who find some solace in each other, and desperately seek a way beyond the current status quo.escapepod.org/2023/12/14/escape-pod-919-… | 2023-12-22 09:54:30 | |
| Hal Schrieve | How To Get Over the End Of the World | Seven Stories | This surreal coming of age tale set among queer trans teen furries, punks, and stoners in a Pacific Northwest slowly succumbing to climate change is full of warmth, satirical humor, and sharp insight into the dynamics between teenagers and adults in trans community spaces. The fantastic elements are light, but eerie, moving, and beautifully handled. | 2023-12-22 09:49:44 | |
| Dominique Dickey | Who the Final Girl Becomes | Nightmare Magazine | nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/who-the-f… | 2023-12-22 09:41:27 | |
| Mae Murray, editor | The Book of Queer Saints Volume II | Medusa Haus | amazon.com/gp/aw/d/b0ckg4v3jz | 2023-12-22 09:31:19 | |
| Lorraine Schein | The Last Revolution | Writers Resist | This is a humorous prose poem about a utopian society of the future..writersresist.com/2023/12/13/the-last-re… | 2023-12-22 09:31:07 | |
| Toshiya Kamei | The Ghost of You | Cosmic Horror Monthly | amazon.com/chm-magazine-34-april-2023-eb… | 2023-12-22 09:27:21 | |
| Rasmussen Rhiannon (co-editor)dave ring (co-editor) | Luminescent Machinations: Queer Tales of Monumental Invention | Neon Hemlock | A speculative anthology exploring the limits of machinery, the fragility and power of queer bodies, and mecha in all their forms.neonhemlock.com/books/luminescent-machin… | 2023-12-22 09:05:03 | |
| Suzan Palumbo | Skin Thief | Neon Hemlock | "Lavishly queer" —Alex Brownneonhemlock.com/books/skin-thief-suzan-p… | 2023-12-22 09:03:30 | |
| Yume Kitasei | The Deep Sky | Flatiron | amazon.com/deep-sky-novel-yume-kitasei/d… | 2023-12-21 16:06:49 | |
| Ash Howell | Forte/Foible or At the Center of Percussion | Baffling Magazine | "It’s ostensibly a conversation between a sword and its wielder, but it’s also a meditation on violence, on who we are versus who we could be, on what we allow ourselves to become versus living our truth." - Alex Brown, Tor.com 610 wordsbafflingmag.com/issue-thirteen/fortefoib… | 2023-12-21 12:51:06 | |
| Ash Howell | Chirality | All Worlds Wayfarer | I am happy to provide a reader’s copy of the work for consideration. A second-person exploration of trans identity, doubt, embodiment, and how stories (the ones we hear often & the ones we haven’t heard before) shape our understanding of selfhood and truth. ~2500 wordsamazon.com/dp/b0cj386nsp | 2023-12-21 12:43:59 | |
| Anya Johanna DeNiro | OKPsyche | Small Beer Press | Beyond the story of a trans woman living in a slightly odder version of the Twin Cities, OKPsyche explores trans and cis gendered communities, families, and friendship.smallbeerpress.com/books/2023/09/12/okps… | 2023-12-21 11:10:11 | |
| Bogi Takács | Construction Sacrifice | Lightspeed | Trans protagonists & themeslightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/construct… | 2023-12-21 10:32:53 | |
| Nathan Maher | Blades & Ballet: Enemy of the Wind | NRM Books | "Blades & Ballet: Enemy of the Wind" is a YA Dark Fantasy novel that explores a world where three sexes are recognized by society, where society is matriarchal, and that gender is not only fluid but is also considered a spiritual journey. Vera is 13-years-old and non-binary. They lose nearly everyone they love to a gigantic monster of wind. To seek vengeance they must train as a ballet-knight for a chance to be infused with the powers of the divine in order to confront the beast. This is a tale of strong friendship, of found family and dealing with grief. nrmbooks.com/products/blades-ballet-enem… | 2023-12-20 10:49:34 | |
| Gregory Coles | The Limits of My World | Walking Carnival Books | Gender and the gendered nature of language are interrogated side-by-side as "pronouns shift in clever ways" in this "fiercely original SF headspinner" (BookLife Reviews, https://booklife.com/project/the-limits-of-my-world-89459). netgalley.com/catalog/book/306530 | 2023-12-18 19:59:47 | |
| Nic Anstett | The Exorsister | One Story | "Stories sometimes quietly open themselves to reveal other stories, and sometimes those stories open up too. So it is with “The Exorsister,” which somehow manages to be horrifying, funny, and moving. One Story is delighted to be publishing this highly original story about change, acceptance, and envy by Nic Anstett." - Patrick Ryan, Editor-in-Chief of "One Story"one-story.com/product/the-exorsister/ | 2023-12-17 11:28:44 | |
| Jeff Dunne | Nexus | Wyrder Books | Nexus is a novel about balance and harmony, about embracing differences and recognizing the value that comes from those differences. It uses gender, and especially defying gender norms, to make these points. Two of the three main characters are written to emphasize the principles of yin and yang, but with non-traditional association - a decidedly yang woman and an equally yin man. The third main character is non-gendered, and necessarily so, for their criticality to the story arises from being at the center of all spectra. The book speaks to the importance of recognizing gender, in whatever form, as a source of strength and inspiration rather than a constraint or barrier to being who we are meant to be.bearcreations.org/nexus/ | 2023-12-13 19:08:30 | |
| Rebecca Hirsch Garcia | The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories | ECW Press | A girl born in a small, unnamed pueblo is blessed—or cursed—with the ability to produce valuable gems from her bodily fluids. A tired wife and mother escapes the confines of her oppressive life and body by shapeshifting into a cloud. A girl reckons with the death of her father and her changing familial dynamics while slowly, mysteriously losing her physical senses. Infused with keen insight and presented in startling prose, the stories in this dark, magnetic collection by newcomer Rebecca Hirsch Garcia invite the reader into an uncanny world out of step with reality while exploring the personal and interpersonal in a way that is undeniably, distinctly human. | 2023-12-12 16:57:53 | |
| JC Rycroft | The Blood-Born Dragon | BattleWarrior Press | The main character who’s a sellsword isn’t a man, Des is a woman who defies always having to wear dresses & chooses to be herself. We also have dragons that are not male or female, but agender, both that produces young by giving birth to dragonets in eggs. And last, but not least this is not a male/female tale, it’s sapphic.amazon.com/blood-born-dragon-everlands-c… | 2023-12-09 03:49:20 | |
| Tim Susman | The Price of Thorns | Argyll Productions | In a world of secrets and stories, Nivvy, the thief, takes on an impossible heist for an enigmatic woman. But hidden truths entwine their fate, revealing a perilous desire beyond a kingdom's theft. ~~~ "…is nothing short of a stand-up-and-applaud storytelling tour de force." ~Bluelnk Reviews • STARRED REVIEW “Working toward an emotional showdown that leaves hope for potential future adventures, the intricate fantasy novel The Price of Thorns follows a spurned queen as she seeks revenge and an ambitious thief as he makes his own way to happiness.” ~Foreword Clarion Reviews • Star Rating: 5 / 5 "Memorable, captivating, and engaging, author Tim Susman's The Price of Thorns is a must-read LGBTQ+ and Dark Fantasy read!" ~Pacific Book Reviews • NOTABLE BOOKargyllproductions.com/product/the-price-… | 2023-12-06 16:32:35 | |
| Duke Oha | THE 9 LIVES | KDP | dukeoha.online/ | 2023-12-06 13:09:04 | |
| Joaquín Baldwin | Wolf of Withervale | Self-published | An ambitious, sweeping saga. As epic as it is queer. Lago was only a child when the shapeshifter entrusted the wolf-like mask to his care. He could not guess at its powers nor envision how such a small artifact could come to shape the entire world of Noss. Now that the empire has scented the relic’s trail, Lago’s only hope of escape is to find the courage to wield the mask, uncover its secrets, and accept the change it brings. A profoundly queer adventure that explores sexuality, our connections to other species, unconventional kinds of love, and the very nature of consciousness.joaquinbaldwin.com/books | 2023-12-05 16:30:51 | |
| Andrew Sean Greer | Calypso's Guest | Amazon Original Stories | A man in exile, banished to a planet far from home and cursed with immortality, discovers that a ship has crash-landed near his settlement. After two hundred years, his heart’s desire has come true. A visitor has finally arrived on his lonely little speck in the stars. He’ll have companionship again. Someone he could love forever. As the weary traveler heals, the two men form a tender bond. But all they’ve come to share may not be enough to curb the visitor’s irrepressible wanderlust. Now the exile, who thought nothing in his endless life would ever change, must make a decision that will change everything.amazon.com/calypsos-guest-andrew-sean-gr… | 2023-12-01 11:57:41 | |
| Nnedi Okorafor | Just Out of Jupiter's Reach | Amazon Original Stories | Tornado Onwubiko is one of seven people on Earth paired with sentient ships to explore and research the cosmos for twenty million euros. A decade of solitary life for a lifetime of wealth. Five years into the ten-year mission of total isolation comes a consolation: a temporary meetup among fellow travelers. A lot can happen in a week. For Tornado, who left a normal life behind, a little company can be life-changing. Nnedi Okorafor’s Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.amazon.com/just-jupiters-reach-reaches-c… | 2023-12-01 11:55:23 | |
| John Scalzi | Slow Time Between the Stars | Amazon Original Stories | Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do. John Scalzi’s Slow Time Between the Stars is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.amazon.com/slow-between-stars-reaches-co… | 2023-12-01 11:53:20 | |
| Ann Leckie | The Long Game | Amazon Original Stories | On a far-off colony, humans tower over the local species who grow the plants they need. Narr keeps the workers in line—someone has to. But when Narr learns just how short-lived their species is, the little alien embarks on a big mission: to find out why their people die and how to stop it. Stubborn and hopeful, Narr has a plan for the locals, for humans, and for the future. Ann Leckie’s The Long Game is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.amazon.com/long-game-far-reaches-collect… | 2023-12-01 11:50:31 | |
| Veronica Roth | Void | Amazon Original Stories | Traveling faster than light, the transport ship Redundancy is cut off from communication as effectively as an ancient ocean liner. The isolation suits crew member Ace Vance just fine—she’s got nowhere else to be. But when a wealthy passenger turns up dead during a routine voyage, Ace will have to connect with the passengers and crew to uncover the truth. Tragedy will strike again—it’s only a matter of time. Veronica Roth’s Void is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.amazon.com/void-reaches-collection-veron… | 2023-12-01 11:47:40 | |
| James S. A. Corey | How It Unfolds | Amazon Original Stories | Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime—several lifetimes in fact—duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future. Yet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope. James S. A. Corey’s How It Unfolds is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.amazon.com/how-unfolds-far-reaches-colle… | 2023-12-01 11:45:19 | |
| Rebecca Roanhorse | Falling Bodies | Amazon Original Stories | A young man caught between two disparate worlds searches for his place in the universe in a wrenching short story by New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Roanhorse. Light-years from home, it’s Ira’s second chance. Just another anonymous student at a space station university. Not the orphan whose Earther heritage was erased. Not some social experiment put on display by his adoptive father. Not the criminal recruited by the human rebels. But when Ira’s loyalties clash once again, two wars break out: one on the ground and one within himself. Which will Ira stand with? Which will take him down? Rebecca Roanhorse’s Falling Bodies is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.amazon.com/falling-bodies-far-reaches-co… | 2023-12-01 11:42:37 | |
| S.B. Divya | Meru | 47North | amazon.com/meru-s-b-divya/dp/1662505094 | 2023-12-01 11:39:24 | |
| Tiffany Morris | Green Fuse Burning | Stelliform Press | Green Fuse Burning is an Indigenous dark fantasy/horror that explores the intersections of Indigenous identity, queerness, and grief. Its poetic language sinks the reader along with its Indigenous lesbian protagonist into a process of transformation.stelliform.press/index.php/product/green… | 2023-12-01 06:50:52 | |
| E.G. Condé | Sordidez | Stelliform Press | Sordidez is an innovative and raw Indigenous futurist novella in which a trans journalits from Puerto Rico seeks new alliances in order to save his beloved island from new colonists after a devastating hurricane. The novella examines the intersection of queerness and gender and Indigenous revolution, reclamation, and resurgence.stelliform.press/index.php/product/sordi… | 2023-12-01 06:36:29 | |
| Sim Kern | Seeds for the Swarm | Stelliform Press | Seeds for the Swarm is a rollicking techno-fantasy climate fiction adventure that refreshes YA dystopia with its queer sensibility and politics. With this revolutionary spirit, this novel confronts the accepted narrative technology-as-savior, while highlighting the importance of community and care in the fight against resource extraction and its impact on marginalized communities.stelliform.press/index.php/product/seeds… | 2023-12-01 06:21:21 | |
| L. R. Lam | Dragonfall | DAW | “With a queernorm cast that challenges the roles of gender and sexuality, 'Dragonfall' is a page-turner that keeps you on the edge of your seat with phenomenal worldbuilding and jaw-dropping twists,” says Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister. L. R. Lam creates a society where gender fluidity is a simple fact of life, inviting readers to challenge traditional ideas of gender roles, disability, and power.astrapublishinghouse.com/product/dragonf… | 2023-11-30 13:37:00 | |
| Wole Talabi | Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon | DAW | In Wole Talabi’s "Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon," Nneoma, an ancient succubus, is a glamorous figure unafraid to step into her own power. As Chris Kluwe wrote in his Lightspeed review: “Talabi does masterful work weaving in gender expectations with subversions of the same in order to highlight issues of female bodily autonomy and social perceptions of women who dare desire sexuality the way men do.”penguinrandomhouse.com/books/688459/shig… | 2023-11-30 13:33:02 | |
| Rachel Churcher | Angels | Taller Books | In her YA novel ‘Angels’, Rachel Churcher uses a metaphor of genetic mutation to explore the LGBTQ+ experience for a Young Adult audience. Her winged angels have existed throughout history, but have always been forced to hide their wings or suffer persecution. When a gorgeous angel model bares his wings on a giant billboard, he paves the way for other angels to come out and reveal who they are – but that’s not the end of their persecution, nor is it an instant solution for every hidden angel. Characters across the spectrum of gender identities explore what it means to live authentically, and the prices to be paid for hiding their true selves. It’s a unique, powerful and effective idea, inviting the reader to consider their own attitudes, their own identity, and their own prejudices throughout the story. barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144353220 | 2023-11-30 11:25:58 | |
| Indra Das | The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar | Subterranean Press | Gorgeous novella about migration and memory that includes some fantastical depictions of gender, as Ru learns about his grandparent's transition and grapples with a kind of cultural dysphoria. subterraneanpress.com/tldob/ | 2023-11-28 12:13:32 | |
| Mark McElroy | Parallel Lines | Self | Could you have been happier with an ex? Or the bi-sexual lover who became closeted action star? Or The One Who Got Away? When stolen technology catapults Thomas into alternative worlds based on different romantic choices, he learns more than he ever expected about life, gender, and what it takes to be loved for who you really are. Parallel Lines also features genuine bisexual characters, like Thomas's boyfriend Les, whose full personhood hinges on being able to express and celebrate all aspects of his sexuality. If you're looking for a smart, LGBTQ+, world-jumping, sci-fi romcom, Parallel Lines (the debut novel of blogger and script-writer Mark McElroy) is just the book for you.amzn.to/3n2ytmk | 2023-11-28 08:11:54 | |
| J.G.P. MacAdam | Ain’t Human | Bizarrchitecture | Hello, Please find linked my recently published short speculative fiction, "Ain’t Human" which explores what it means to be a woman and human in war against purportedly nonhuman enemies. Thank you!bizarrchitecture.net/jgp-macadam-1 | 2023-11-27 14:33:24 | |
| Joanne McNeil | WRONG WAY | MCD (FSG) | us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610661/wro… | 2023-11-26 13:48:25 | |
| Debbie Urbanski | After World | Simon & Schuster | After World is narrated by an AI who is tasked with telling the story of the last human on Earth. The novel challenges the traditional roles of girls, women and mothers in the post-apocalypse genre. simonandschuster.com/books/after-world/d… | 2023-11-24 05:33:53 | |
| Lydia Kwa | A Dream Wants Waking | Wolsak and Wynn Publishers | In 2219 CE, many years after the Great Catastrophe, the Central Government of Luoyang has divided the city into zones where inhabitants, both human and chimeric, are placed by usefulness. The citizens of the city are overseen by No. 1, a giant chimeric brain created by the scientists in Bright Order to monitor all activity within the city while distracting the residents with virtual spectacles. But No. 1 has begun to behave erratically. Meanwhile, the Spirit Supreme Assembly in Interstitium, a religious order with a dangerous new leader, continues to grow in power, sanctioned by the Central Government. The city’s only hope lies with Yinhe, a half-human half-fox spirit who has lived many lives and hides truths in tales shared with listeners in Bent Back. Summoned to Dream Zone, where chimeric inhabitants of the city have been exiled to performbookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/collections/a… | 2023-11-21 09:31:18 | |
| Bogi TakácsLisa M. BradleyPolenth BlakeStefani CoxJulie NovákováD.A. Xiaolin SpiresLydia MoonLeigh HarlenCelia NeriUrsula WhitcherPremee MohamedEmma Alice JohnsonSantiago BellucoJulian K. JarboePhoebe BartonJennifer Lee RossmanKanika AgrawalLaura Jane SwansonOsahon Ize-IyamuVajra ChandrasekeraCameron Van SantTessa FisherHal Y. ZhangIsha Karki | Rosalind's Siblings | Atthis Arts | Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Scientists of Marginalized Genders, edited by Bogi Takácsatthisarts.com/product/rosalinds-sibling… | 2023-11-19 06:25:29 | |
| M. L. Krishnan | Interstate Mohinis | Diabolical Plots | Centered around the Mohini mythos, this is a story about a boiling river, lonely women, night roads, and the kinds of seeing that happens in unspeakable circumstances. diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-100b-inte… | 2023-11-14 20:21:55 | |
| Sin BlachéHelen Macdonald | Prophet | Grove Atlantic | From the extraordinary minds of award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald and first-time author Sin Blaché comes Prophet, their electric debut novel and a tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi and a slow burn queer romance—set in a universe just one perilous step from our own. Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things—about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives. groveatlantic.com/book/prophet/ | 2023-11-08 15:12:12 | |
| Anya Johanna DeNiro | “The Water-Wolf” | Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine | trans history and a lot more | 2023-11-08 11:31:09 | |
| Ann Leckie | Translation State | Orbit Books | so much fun with gender pronouns | 2023-11-08 11:24:38 | |
| Avi Silver | Pluralities | Atthis Arts | Tender, witty, and daring, Pluralities is a slipstream-meets-space-adventure story honoring the long and turbulent journey into gender euphoria. - More info and blurbs by Nino Cipri, Bogi Takács, Jordan Kurella, Bryan Thao Worra, José Pablo Iriarte, and L.X. Beckett at https://www.atthisarts.com/product/pluralities/atthisarts.com/product/pluralities/ | 2023-11-08 10:22:59 | |
| Wole Talabi | Saturday’s Song | Lightspeed Magazine | A story in which the days of the week are personified as god-like beings whose domain is stories. Saturday leads her siblings to tell the story of a queer woman living in urban Nigeria whose lover dies mysteriously. As the days of the week tell this story, it becomes more than a story, it becomes a song about family, love, acceptance and forgiveness. lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/saturdays… | 2023-09-09 02:30:35 | |
| Redfern Jon Barrett | Proud Pink Sky | Amble Press | In this stunning work of speculative urban fiction, Redfern Jon Barrett breaks down the binary between utopia and dystopia—presenting an ambitopian vision of the world’s first gay state. “To enter the pages of Proud Pink Sky is to be engulfed by a tidal power of masterful storytelling, morphing histories, and utopian imaginings. Boundaries of families and colonies, maps and guidebooks, words and sounds, dissolve into delicious, heady outcomes in this vital inhabitation of queer homelands.” —Gayathri Prabhu, author of If I Had to Tell It Againamazon.com/proud-pink-sky-redfern-barret… | 2023-08-31 05:59:47 | |
| Leisl Kaberry | Shadows of Darkness | Self | [The person who recommended this book provided no comments or description, only a one-paragraph quotation from the book that didn’t seem to mention gender and that repeatedly used a term that’s sometimes used as an ethnic slur. We’ve therefore removed the quotation.] | 2023-08-29 11:14:24 | |
| Alison Levy | Magic By Any Other Name | SparkPress | Award winning author explores abuse and found family in a tender YA fantasy. In 'Magic By Any Other Name,' a young witch leaves her toxic family, adopts a new identity, and flees across the country. Helped by the magical creatures she meets along the way, she confronts her past trauma and the realities her privileged family separated her from. Perfect for fans of 'The Society of Irregular Witches.'goodreads.com/book/show/123767153-magic-… | 2023-08-29 06:47:04 | |
| Geoffreyjen Edwards | Plenum: The First Book of Deo | Untimely Books | What happens when a la-gendered novice in the Kinship of the Suffering God encounters a young findiv while away from hir home environment? In this genderqueer story, a love affair goes awry as Vanu Francoeur struggles to overcome bullying both by individuals and her society. She’s helped by an intelligent octupus or oggie and a jonah, a beast descended from the whales of old Earth but adapted to function in interstellar space. Vanu struggles to understand hir gender, hir sexuality, hir spirituality and hir family relationships in a world with seven genders (named as a musical scale) and radical body-based technologies that redefine what it is to be human, in a far future story which threads its way across a star formation nebula and reaches its final confrontation in a lyrical encounter in the heart of a sun.untimelybooks.com/book/plenum-the-first-… | 2023-08-26 04:26:58 | |
| Theodora Ward | Want Itself is a Treasure in Heaven | Uncanny Magazine | According to Nic Anstett, "Theodora Ward’s 'Want Itself is a Treasure in Heaven' is only weeks old and it has already become one of my favorite works of trans sci-fi. Its central conceit involves a neurological link that allows two users to enter one another’s minds and bodies as a passive observer. Our trans woman narrator quickly becomes fixated on linking with her cis woman partner and in turn develops an addiction to the disassociating drug used to acclimate someone post-link. Ward’s narrator goes through a spiraling rabbit hole of dysphoria, obsession, and grief that is all too familiar to the experiences of myself and many other trans women. Like so much of the best science fiction, Ward uses her premise to touch on an underdiscussed human truth but also, thankfully, offers a lifeline out of despair." https://www.tor.com/2023/06/21/ten-essential-short-stories-by-trans-authors/uncannymagazine.com/article/want-itself-… | 2023-08-17 17:12:17 | |
| Jarret Keene | Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel | University of Nevada Press | A postapocalyptic adventure in Las Vegas for readers of all ages. Set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Hammer of the Dogs is a literary dystopian adventure filled with high-octane fun starring twenty-one-year-old Lash. With her high-tech skill set and warrior mentality, Lash is a master of her own fate as she helps to shield the Las Vegas valley’s survivors and protect her younger classmates at a paramilitary school holed up in Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. After graduation, she’ll be alone in fending off the deadly intentions and desires of the school’s most powerful opponents. unpress.nevada.edu/9781647791278/ | 2023-08-07 11:27:12 | |
| Chloe Spencer | Monstersona | Tiny Ghost Press | Monstersona is a YA sci-fi horror novel which centers on two teenage girls who must embark on a cross-country road trip after a freak explosion destroys their hometown. The story explores themes pertaining to female rage, bodily autonomy, queerness, and neurodivergency/disability, and how these things intersect. tinyghostpress.com/monstersona | 2023-07-22 14:05:59 | |
| Niall Spain | The Princess Network | Zombies Need Brains LLC | Explores the typical trope of a princess kidnapped by a dragon but with a twist... | 2023-07-19 11:06:51 | |
| Avi Burton | The Body Fate | Fantasy Magazine | An amazing exploration of role, identity, and expectation in just 3,300 words! | 2023-07-09 09:33:49 | |
| Maxwell I. Gold | anOther Mythology | Interstellar Flight Press | From Thanatos to Hades, Maxwell Gold’s book of horror prose poetry reimagines myths from a queer perspective. Gold’s poetry merges camp sensibility and cosmic horror in poems that are beautiful, bloody, and barbed. A poetic soap opera of gods and monsters. amazon.com/another-mythology-maxwell-i-g… | 2023-07-06 13:48:31 | |
| Ennis Rook Bashe | Beautiful Malady | Interstellar Flight Press | A siren song of queerness, disability, and myth, these poems reinvent love, life, and death. BEAUTIFUL MALADY is an exploration of pain, weaving speculative poems about fairy tales, folklore, fantasy, and the supernatural with the reality of chronic illness and disability. Ennis Rook Bashe deftly creates a world where the broken body is beautiful. amazon.com/beautiful-malady-ennis-rook-b… | 2023-07-06 13:47:02 | |
| Chloe Clark | Patterns of Orbit | Baobab Press | 2023-06-30 09:41:12 | ||
| Aven Shore-Kind | The Truthseer And The Goose | Indepentent | The Truthseer and the Goose dares to conjure a pastoral fantasy where magic's wellspring is an open heart, and where patient observance of the rhythm of nature reveals what is honest and enduring. It is beautiful, and warm, and sometimes sad - and always fearlessly true. This is a patient story that cares about genuine growth, honest labor done well, and more than anything else, generous acceptance of the humanity at the center of each of us. But it is also a book of surprise, as it unfolds and shows you more and more of itself in the telling. In the end, it is so much more than you think it will be, and the realization is lovely. I love this book very much.amazon.com/truthseer-goose-aven-shore-ki… | 2023-06-27 19:28:45 | |
| E.D.E. Bell | Inkbloom | Atthis Arts | This novel features a neurodivergent and bisexual main character in a world inclusive of gender diversity and polyamory. Xelle is marked as dragonfriend. Arriving at To’Ever under a veil of unease and an uncertain future, she must redefine herself. Again. Inkbloom continues the story of Night Ivy, a wandering bard’s tale of magic and friendship amidst the spires and shadows of the seven towers of Alyssia. “Like the first breeze of spring after a long winter, E.D.E. Bell warms hearts and plants seeds of hope with her words. Do yourself a favour and read this book.” – Marie Bilodeau, bestselling author of Heirs of a Broken Landatthisarts.com/product/inkbloom/ | 2023-05-23 08:25:26 | |
| Deena Mohamed | Shubeik Lubeik | Pantheon | 2023-05-18 10:00:05 | ||
| Anna-Marie McLemore | Lakelore | Feiwel and Friends | 2023-05-17 10:41:45 | ||
| TA GAYLORD | The Blackstone Twins Face Off vs. Destiny | TA Gaylord | This story is a captivating adventure of twins, sister and brother, Zoe and Zachary, in a post-apocalyptic world who go on a quest in search of a cure for the NIGHT MADNESS, the affliction that every non-mother is forced to face every sunset. Rumors of a cure in the mountains lead the twins and their small group across California to the Sierra Nevada’s, overcoming perils on the way. The characters are so realistic and endearing that I got totally caught up in the story and couldn’t put the book down. I loved the attention to details, especially Caroline’s facts. I would highly recommend this book to all readers, young and less young, who enjoy well written quest adventures in a dystopian, matriarchal world. Zach and Zoe are great characters. I love this book and can't wait for the next adventure! https://tagaylordauthor.com/home | 2023-05-16 09:43:14 | |
| Kristina KellyJonathan Fuller | Trials of the Innermost | Hansen House | In Trials of the Innermost, six of the realms' best and brightest work together to accomplish tasks to preserve a fragile peace between previously warring realms. Idrilia-despite her realm treating genders equally, they still hold fast to old edicts that state one of their goals as a society is to "preserve numbers" - everyone must pair up male+female to reproduce. Idrilia rejects this. Through the story she struggles with her duty to her realm and her identity - she's bi and damn the rules. The realm of Komor devalues women, but the gay character Zinvar is working to change that. Realm Heathstrom affirms women can use magic but ace character Vayriel challenges that magic is for all. Male Kilahym could be described as effeminate but no character bats an eye. The 6 encounter pansexual and non-binary characters also.ethereacycle.com | 2023-05-10 07:40:01 | |
| B. PigeonFell A. Marsh | Hierarchy of the Unseen | EHLS | Hierarchy of the Unseen is a queer speculative fiction novel following a shiftless demon and a devout demon hunter who must join forces to disrupt the dangerous plans set by those in power. The novel depicts queer, trans characters who are denied a voice and the autonomy to decide their own futures within a set of coercive social structures. Its themes of gender, assimilation, and self-actualization are sure to resonate with LGBTQ+ readers.amazon.com/dp/b0c3z6x4hn | 2023-05-04 15:01:32 | |
| Kelly Robson | High Times in the Low Parliament | Tor.com | The hints we receive about how we ended up in a fairy-enforced world order without men are dark, and limited. Like many books premised without men, it fails to deal with trans or non-binary characters from what I could tell. The protagonist was grating at first as a shallow flirt, but worked for me BECAUSE there was no male gender interference. Whether the Parliament was meant as a metaphor for the European Union, or their desperate votes to avoid a flood meant to draw our eyes to our ongoing climate crisis, is debatable. Everyone convinced themselves that they have no real power - which means, of course, that we all have it..goodreads.com/book/show/58724605-high-ti… | 2023-05-02 08:23:24 | |
| Rae Mariz | The Field Guide for Next Time | khōréō magazine | khoreomag.com/fiction/the-field-guide-fo… | 2023-04-25 08:32:48 | |
| Hal Schrieve | Vivian's Ghost | Self-Published | "Trans man Collin is haunted by the ghost of his suicidal friend. An anti-trans journalist is about to be too." Vivian's Ghost is a longform comic. It's messy, raw, and pulls no punches, but still centers humor, community, and growth. The comic was posted page-by-page on the author's Instagram, is available in four digital volumes, and was self-published as a collected print edition in early 2023.halschrieve.itch.io/ | 2023-04-19 10:55:46 | |
| Alyce Elmore | Pray To the Dead | Xlibris | If all adult men died and boys only lived to be twenty, would her story become the new history? It's not your typical 'men die and women create a better world' story.amazon.com.au/pray-dead-angels-tread-tri… | 2023-04-09 19:53:25 | |
| Lianyu Tan | The Wicked and the Willing | Shattered Scepter Press | This historical gothic horror vampire novel explores gender and colonialism via a destitute Chinese maidservant caught in a love triangle between her white English vampiric mistress and her fellow servant, Po Lam. Po Lam is a butch Chinese woman who serves as the vampire’s faithful servant but is struggling with a life of bondage and murder. Her journey towards absolution offers commentary on the complexities of labor exploitation and colonialism. Tan’s writing is vivid and immersive, bringing the reader into the world of colonial 1920s Singapore. The book contains two mutually exclusive endings, but both endings provide a thought-provoking meditation on power, desire, and sacrifice. Jurors are welcome to request review copies from the author. Content warnings: https://lianyutan.com/content-warnings/#wicked https://lianyutan.com/book/the-wicked-and-the-willing/lianyutan.com/book/the-wicked-and-the-wi… | 2023-04-01 00:27:40 | |
| N. D. Jones | Bearly Gold: A Goldilocks and the Three Bears Reimagining | Kuumba Publishing | amazon.com/bearly-gold-goldilocks-reimag… | 2023-03-17 15:12:18 | |
| Chana Porter | The Thick and the Lean | Saga Press | In Lambda Award finalist Chana Porter’s highly anticipated new novel, an aspiring chef, a cyberthief, and a kitchen maid each break free of a society that wants to constrain them. A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.simonandschuster.com/books/the-thick-and… | 2023-03-08 12:52:12 | |
| Dale Griffin | The Last Lion of Karkov | Books Fluent | 2023-03-03 16:36:23 | ||
| Nick Walker | "Ruiz and the Echo Hotel" | Argawarga Press, an imprint of Autonomous Press | The final novelette in the anthology Weird Luck Tales 8: https://autonomous-press.myshopify.com/products/weird-luck-tales-no-8 | 2023-02-12 20:46:44 | |
| Mame Bougouma DieneWoppa Diallo | A Soul of Small Places | Tordotcom - Africa Risen anthology | Published November 15 2022 | 2023-02-04 05:04:47 | |
| Leilani Taneus-Miller | Brown Girl | Austin Macauley | Touching account of a young teen damaged by racism. Set in 1980’s. Guaranteed to stir up conversations on race, gender and mental health.goodreads.com/book/show/68001101-brown-g… | 2023-01-19 11:39:50 | |
| D. A Mucci | Ignatius and the Battle at Dinas Affaraon | St. Barts Publishing | Iggy forges a sword from a meteorite–but will it be the weapon to save them? As the obsessive Emperor Mallak plans to kill Iggy for his crystal amulet, Iggy remains entirely focused on becoming a master smith. Well, almost entirely–he is distracted by his crush, Raraesa, and can’t help but hope that she notices his newfound fighting skills (and fighting physique). There’s just one problem: a dark wizard, a Death Knight, and five thousand soldiers have been tasked with hunting him down. Where will he hide? The mysteries of the Nostaw Warrior still haunt Iggy. There must be a repiceason he was given the sword, and he prays it will help him return to his place and time in Pennsylvania–but right now, home seems farther away than ever. Will he find the answers he’s seeking on the Island of Cambria?amazon.com/gp/product/b0bcdhqddl/ | 2023-01-11 16:16:56 | |
| Rem Wigmore | Wolfpack | Queen of Swords Press | Queen of Swords Press is happy to make the book available for the jury.queenofswordspress.com/product/wolfpack/ | 2023-01-08 05:30:00 | |
| Eugen Bacon | Broken Paradise | Luna Press Publishing | A dark fantasy of gods, magic and family—what happens when they break. After falling out with her brothers, Samaki the goddess of water flees to Earth where she must mask her trace by splitting into a quadruplet of magi. A quadruplet is perfect, but all things are never equal. Dissonance arises when the magus Umozi breaks the quadruplet. Only the newness of a child magus can restore balance and save a broken paradise—with the help of a goddess mother.lunapresspublishing.com/product-page/bro… | 2023-01-06 21:47:07 | |
| Joseph A. Schiller | Upon the Arrival of Dawn | Joseph A. Schiller | A darkness grows, threatening the delicate fabric of the Universe. An ominous cloud spreads, bringing an increasing imbalance across the Cosmos. Essences bent on wickedness and ultimate destruction are violently stripping the Energy of Life from innocent terrestrial creatures, bringing Existence to the very brink of collapse. Only one Celestial essence boldly accepts the calling to seek out the source of the encroaching evil and restore Harmony once again to Existence. Azrael, humble servant of Eternity, offspring of Existence, will stop at nothing to protect the Universe, mortal and immortal alike.amazon.com/upon-arrival-dawn-joseph-schi… | 2023-01-01 20:20:16 | |
| Sarah Soh | Juniper Mae: Knight of Tykotech City | Nobrow US Inc./Flying Eye Books | FOR READERS OF THE BROWNSTONE SERIES & HILDA: readers who enjoy middle grade series with an animated feel will cozy up to Juniper Mae EXCITING DEBUT CREATOR: Sarah Soh is a debut creator with a knack for animation-forward illustrations THE FIRST IN AN EPIC THREE BOOK SERIES: a sci-fi series that will keep readers hooked FUN ADVENTURE GRAPHIC NOVEL WITH STRONG FEMALE ENERGETIC PROTAGONIST: Young kids will gravitate toward her liveliness FOR YOUNG SCI-FI FANS LIKE AMULET AND ZITA: STEM lovers will enjoy Juniper Mae, a smart young engineer heroine penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653265/juni… | 2022-12-09 11:49:39 | |
| Al Hess | World Running Down | Angry Robot | ARC available from Al on request Odyssey x Blade Runner, but all the queer joy. Delicious prose, gritty, engaging post-apocalyptic world, and characters you’ll fall for. Hard. Al Hess is a masterful writer. It’s clear from the very beginning that he has the heart of a poet and the imagination of a storyteller. His comfort with structure has him providing us a story with the perfect flow of tension and hope to keep us in our feels as we breathlessly turn each page. He has unique and important things to say about living in a body that doesn’t match who you are, and Valentine’s journey as a trans man is refracted elegantly in Osric’s own fraught relationship with his corporeality. a.co/d/ccxqq4r | 2022-11-29 19:15:17 |