We need your recommendations of works for the Otherwise Award jurors to consider. If you’ve read a recently published work of science fiction or fantasy that explores or expands our understanding of gender, please tell us about it by filling out the recommendation form below. If you have more than one, fill out the form again for each recommendation.
(Works can be books, stories, music, video, fanfic, social media posts, or any other form of speculative fiction.)
Please only recommend works that were published in 2024 or 2025. (For works published in 2024, check to make sure they weren’t on the 2024 recommendations list.)
In the form below, 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.
The Additional Comments field is optional, but we recommend saying something in that field about the ways in which the work explores or expands gender.
Because anyone can recommend a work, a work’s presence on this list doesn’t indicate recognition by the Otherwise Award, so please don’t use a work’s presence on this list to promote the work. You’re welcome to promote works that win the award, or that appear on an Honor List.
Recommendations for this year’s award close in late 2025. (Recommendations after that will go to the 2026 award.) The 2025 awards will be given in 2026, location to be determined.
To let us know something related to recommendations that doesn’t fit in the form, email recommendations@otherwiseaward.org.
The 2025 Otherwise Award Recommendations
| Author | Title | Publisher | Comments | Sub Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| West Ambrose | The Last Boy on Earth | Rebel Satori | Julian, an unlikely passenger aboard an undersea ship with no destination and captained by a madman, seeks to unfold the past by throwing himself into new liaisons with beautiful men and creatures. Still learning how to swim, Vern kicks frantically against the undertow of his misfortunes as he alchemizes his desires. Despite taking separate voyages, their meeting soon becomes inevitable. Past The Shallows and into The Below, what begins as a tenuous meeting of opposites quickly becomes a lovers’ pact. Aboard the Clarel, all is not as it seems. Adrian captains the ship, oblivious to all except the needs of his crew, accompanied by an ache he has known for as long as he can remember. Dimitri, his steadfast navigator, draws detailed maps to every place they could ever voyage…all except one.rebelsatori.com/product/the-last-boy-on-… | 2025-04-05 04:43:40 | |
| West Ambrose | The Last Hurrah | Bottlecap Press | Abandoned in his summer cottage and missing his childhood friends dearly, a boy summons their ghosts with the hope of seeing them one last time. What ensues instead is a summer of storytelling, the Thousand and One Nights with no bedtime. All three play the parts of their shadowplays, both past and present, fantasy and fiction, to pass the days, desperate to never admit what’s on their minds. The Last Hurrah invites every pneumococcal boy to come out from their sickbed or their studies to play and to desire, at least one last time before shuffling this mortal coil. This time the reader controls the planchette- but the board is changed. West Ambrose is a scrivener and performing artist. Check out his ever queer works at westofcanon.com. His verse novel, INFERNAS, is available now. If you want anything published inbottlecap.press/products/hurrah | 2025-04-05 04:42:06 | |
| West Ambrose | Nisus and Euryalus at the Louvre | OnlyPoems | A maximalist journey through masculinities and historicities, told as a love story at a museumonlypoems.net/poem-of-the-month/2024/feb… | 2025-04-05 04:39:38 | |
| West Ambrose | The Lovelace Test | Cold Signal Magazine | transhuman love storycold-signal.com/the-lovelace-test-2-0-we… | 2025-04-05 04:34:51 | |
| Allen Dean Maiora | # 1.1 | The writer's perspective on the main theme of the novel is new and fresh. There is a profound sense of alienation, with a loss of control and identity. It is the viewpoint from which the events unfold that makes it different. Images and sensations are conveyed in an intense and profound wayamazon.com/1-1-allen-dean-maiora-ebook/d… | 2025-03-31 01:31:55 | ||
| Pippa Goldschmidt | ‘Schrödinger’s Wife (and other possibilities)’ | Goldsmiths Press/Gold SF | A short story collection that investigates the hidden side of scientific discoveries, focusing on the women central to those discoveries and yet written out of history. This collection travels through laboratories, observatories, hotel rooms, hospitals, out to the Antarctic and into outer space, following the trails of women scientists, technicians, patients, doctors, cleaners, and spouses in their encounters with some of the most extraordinary aspects of modern science. The collection plays with form and genre, mixing up realist and historical voices with more speculative and fantastical ones. What all the stories have in common is a desire to give a voice to those who have been silenced or who never had a voice, as well as a desire to reimagine the way we can do science. Shortlisted for the BSFA 2024 Awards. mitpress.mit.edu/9781915983183/schroding… | 2025-03-25 06:26:21 | |
| Jane Schoenbrun | I Saw the TV Glow | A horror movie that draws inspiration from _Buffy_ and from the writer/director’s own trans experience.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/i_saw_the_tv_glow | 2025-03-08 23:34:41 | ||
| Jen Fawkes | Daughters of Chaos: a Novel | Abrams | Inspired by Aristophanes' Lysistrata and the true story of Nashville's attempt to exile its prostitutes during the American Civil War, Daughters of Chaos weaves together "found" texts, fabulism, and queer themes to question familiar notions of history and family, warfare and power. "Jen Fawkes’s writing—and her characters—are ferociously, radiantly compelling in Daughters of Chaos. Like the best historical fiction, this speaks to the reader and the times in which she lives." —Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love "A riot of lust, secrets, gods, and mythical creatures make this a thoroughly entertaining novel, rich in detail and lavish prose. Fawkes shines a light on women troublemakers through time in this dazzling feminist tale." --Kirkus Reviews "Fawkes' genre-blending debut novel expertly examines how women have found and exerted their own power throughout history." --Booklistamazon.com/daughters-chaos-novel-jen-faw… | 2025-03-08 11:18:06 | |
| Maggie Umber | Chrysanthemum Under the Waves | Maggie Umber LLC | Chrysanthemum Under the Waves is a book of mourning from Sound of Snow Falling author Maggie Umber. In the nine comics collected here, Umber grieves for the loss of her former self – a wife, a co-founder of a successful publishing company, and a person with good health living in a pre-pandemic world. Over the course of nearly 300 pages, she says goodbye to all she held most dear. In Chrysanthemum Under the Waves, Umber uses the demon lover theme, first as a way to hold on to her past, and finally, as a way to let it go.maggieumber.com/chrysanthemum-under-the-… | 2025-03-05 06:37:14 | |
| Ann LeBlanc | Memories Held Against a Hungry Mouth | Three-Lobed Burning Eye | Gender isn’t the primary focus of this story, but it nonetheless does some very interesting things with gender.3lobedmag.com/issue41/3lbe41_story3.html | 2025-03-02 09:11:56 | |
| Holly Gramazio | The Husbands | Doubleday | A meditation on marriage, a woman's choice to be single or to explore commitment, romance, and more. | 2025-02-28 14:06:50 | |
| R.S.A. Garcia | The Nightward | Harper Voyager | Caribbean mythology meets The Witcher, and introduces a world where women warrior-magicians rule, and a child princess and her bodyguard must flee an attempted coup and evade the wave of darkness sent to kill her. Set in a matriarchal society, the inciting incident is a coup is supported by a male dominated foreign power. The Nightward uses "magic" as an allegory to explore how gender and power are constructed. While women have the power as they hold the stronger magic in this world, the premise of gender supremacy is not left unchallenged as non binary forms of gender presentation are not only represented but venerated. Garcia's work determinedly inverts our patriarchal societal gender norms for an uncomfortable and demanding read. | 2025-02-23 15:42:21 | |
| Hache Pueyo | But Not Too Bold | Tordotcom | Gothic and sapphic monster romance about an eldritch spider woman, her keeper of the keys, and the danger and delight of feeling seen. Loosely inspired by Bluebeard.torpublishinggroup.com/but-not-too-bold/ | 2025-02-22 13:56:58 | |
| Jacob North | Ice Apprentices | Simon & Schuster Children's UK | Ice Apprentices is an enchanting debut book by children's author Jacob North, an action-packed fantasy story that celebrates the freedom of gender identity in its characters and is, at its heart, about belonging. Tundra is the last settlement in a world of ice. Oswin Fields is its only stray, rescued from the Endless Expanse. So, when he's summoned to the school for ice apprentices, he sets out to prove his worth. But all isn’t as it seems in this enchanted place. When the beasts begin to strike, Oswin has to risk everything he holds dear. Can he look deep within himself to find the strength to prove that he belongs?simonandschuster.co.uk/books/ice-apprent… | 2025-02-20 08:26:42 | |
| Olivia Waite | Murder by Memory | Tordotcom | Dorothy, even though she is in a young body, (not hers, by the way) has the savvy and sensibility of a woman past 50 like the great sleuths Miss Marple and Mrs. Pollifax. The science fiction is intriguing. What if people could be recorded into a "book" so when their body wears out they can be uploaded into a new one, kind of like Mickey from Mickey7. The societal norms, relationships, and culture seem to have evolved organically on a ship where people are virtually immortal but their bodies are not. | 2025-02-18 17:31:49 | |
| Brenda Clough | His Selachian Majesty Requests | Book View Cafe | This work will be published in April 2025. It will be viewable on this page: https://bookviewcafe.com/bvc_author/brenda-w-clough/ | 2025-02-18 16:33:51 | |
| Alyce Elmore | Ms | Fanciful Flights | For Where There Are Harps is the third book in a series about a world controlled by women. The first two books have received accolades for their portrayal of gender diversity and world building. Recently Literary Titan awarded this latest book 4 stars, saying, " It’s for readers who love deeply political dystopias, rich world-building, and morally complex characters." amzn.asia/d/cnenjsf | 2025-02-18 14:28:50 | |
| Judith Segal | Marie Antoinette Comes To Marilyn Monroe In A Dream | WestWord Lit Mag | This fantasy links the status and fates of Marilyn Monroe and Marie Antoinette, as visible women in a man's world, across two centuries.westword.substack.com/p/marie-antoinette… | 2025-02-13 07:47:12 | |
| Kit Bashir | untitled | self | Evocative in its brevity.aus.social/@unixbigot/113959239985030359 | 2025-02-11 07:15:42 | |
| Rachel Bolton | And She Had Been So Reasonable | Apex Magazine | apexbookcompany.com/a/blog/apex-magazine… | 2025-01-28 19:28:47 | |
| Jared Pechacek | The West Passage | Tordotcom | I don't know if this is enough "exploration and expansion of gender," but it's a great book, and one of the main characters changes pronouns halfway through, so I'm going to throw it out there! Delightfully gross and weird and inventive high fantasy in a palace where almost nothing is as it seems at first. | 2025-01-12 18:36:28 | |
| Heather Werner | Summit's Shadow | Launch Point Press | Mountaineering is a man's world--or so it would seem from an outside perspective. Books, movies, and television shows rarely showcase women's expeditions, and spend even less time on LGBTQ+ stories, despite this rapidly growing demographic among the sport. Summit's Shadow dives into the heart-pounding world of high-altitude climbing and narrows its focus to an all-women team: their unique struggles, their unbreakable friendship, and their blossoming love. It's a story that warms the heart while chilling the bones, and offers a more diverse glimpse into one of the most extreme sports on the planet.barnesandnoble.com/w/summits-shadow-heat… | 2024-12-29 14:21:21 | |
| Justin Snead | The UFO Chronicles Four Short Stories | 2024-12-28 22:16:43 | |||
| Olga Tokarczuk Translator: Antonia Lloyd-Jones | The Empusium | Riverhead Books | 2024-12-23 16:10:57 | ||
| April McCloud | The Switch | QueerSpace/Rebel Satori | This book absolutely blew my mind. The author does an incredible job of expanding their main character's perspectives on gender, identity, and disability. Naomi (the MC) is forced into a situation where the only way out is an illegal body-swap. She experiences living in bodies that don't match her gender identity and meets people with a variety of relationships to gender and self. It's action-packed, creative, and incredibly readable, but just as impressive, it makes its points about gender, disability, and identity in slow, gentle ways that are accessible to even people with little life-experience outside of abled- and cishet-normativity. I wish everyone in the world could get a copy of this book. I think it would start some important conversations.rebelsatori.com/product/the-switch/ | 2024-11-24 09:16:48 | |
| Miranda Mellis | Crocosmia | Nightboat Books | From the author/publisher: A philosophical fable, Crocosmia centers on Maya as she recollects the “great turning”—an epochal shift towards egalitarian eco-socialism. She recalls growing up on a rural commune run by anarchist nuns and how her mother, Jane, created a telekinetic artwork with the uncanny power to intervene in geopolitics. Maya and Jane’s relationship enacts the tension between a life of wounded, lyrical solitude and militant, anti-statist action. This lush novel is a meditation on how, on the precipice of biospheric unraveling, dreams of communal care can bloom.nightboat.org/book/crocosmia/ | 2024-11-20 20:52:40 | |
| Lana Min | Alaric | Medium | medium.com/the-black-veil/there-once-was… | 2024-11-17 14:08:15 | |
| Sarah Salcedo | In a Clearing on the Darkest Day | Kaleidotrope | kaleidotrope.net/autumn-2024/in-a-cleari… | 2024-11-16 13:59:49 | |
| Linda H. Codega | Motheater | Erehwon | 2024-07-29 11:41:08 |