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, poems, 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 strongly recommend saying something in that field about the ways in which the work explores or expands gender—doing so helps the jury as well as anyone who’s using this page as a reading list.
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. (When a work wins the award or appears on an Honor List, you can use that to promote the work.)
Recommendations for this year’s award close on November 14, 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miranda Jensen | Fata Morgana | Worldstone Publishing, Summer of Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Volume Four | Drawing from Arthurian lore, this speculative short story reimagines Morgan le Fay's legendary shapeshifting power in a genderqueer lens, making a mirage--a fata morgana--of gender. worldstonepublishing.com/shop/p/summer-o… | 2025-10-30 15:15:12 | |
| Cait Gordon | Speculative Shorts: Stories that fell out of my brain | Dinsdale Press | This is a collection of fifteen tales of queer life, disability, romance, power, defiance, and resilience. Almost every protagonist is female, with the exception of a fabulous nonbinary Alice in a clubbing wonderland, and an exhausted interplanetary public servant. Some of the representation in Speculative Shorts includes an autistic woman who accidentally becomes a superhero, a crone commander overseeing the rebirth of a devastated planet, a disabled courier pilot who defies a eugenics government, a daughter searching for a mystical remedy to save her Irish mother, a disabled Frankenstein’s monster unimpressed by her sweet sixteenth birthday present, a mermaid-siren who doesn’t fall for a prince, two divas of different ages who turn the competition trope on its head, and a teen alien “doing time” in a seniors residence where she faces her own ageism head on.dinsdalepress.ca/speculative-shorts-stor… | 2025-10-30 06:49:44 | |
| S.C. Mills | The Least of the Lumberjacks | Dudes Rock anthology | The Least of the Lumberjacks follows a trans masculine main character. Not only does it touch on dysphoria and isolation, but it goes further and explores the process of making oneself vulnerable in order to connect with other men. A beautiful and unexpected short story that is somehow both nuanced and fable-esque.scmills-books.com/the-least-of-the-lumbe… | 2025-10-30 02:08:40 | |
| Adriaan Brae | Part Time Girl | Presses Renaissance Press | Having lived as a boy for many years, the MC desperately wants to stop switching to girl-shape, as it’s creating havoc in their life. But they start to question why they’ve been confining themselves to one gender, even as the true risks of discovery become starkly clear, in the form of a powerful organization of wizards that hunt people who shift sex. Part Time Girl raises the idea of a main character who has switched physical sex attributes weekly their whole life. The MCs socially-ingrained focus on sex attributes limits their ability to make use of their full powers. They need to break free of that mindset to stop the fascist wizards from killing (or magically brainwashing) their friends.braevitae.com/w/parttimegirl | 2025-10-29 22:06:56 | |
| Cory O'Brien | Two Truths and a Lie | Pantheon Books | In the near-future of Cory O’Brien’s TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, some humans have integrated technology into their bodies, allowing them to push their consciousness into other bodies that are also technologically equipped. This resleeving of consciousness and the sharing of memories between devices moves humans into a state beyond gender. Further, as our joyfully bisexual protagonist discovers, when technology can be used to edit or delete memories, it can therefore be used to reshape your romantic past in ways that also – tragically – remove your understanding of yourself. All of these things make one consider the concept of gender in new ways, as best sci-fi can. | 2025-10-29 12:56:19 | |
| Mattie Lubchansky | Simplicity | Pantheon Books | With a trans protagonist at its center, Simplicity explores present gender and identity struggles through the lens of a near dystopian future. | 2025-10-29 09:32:49 | |
| Natalia Theodoridou | Restore, Reflect, Retry | Choice of Games | This is a text-based game that puts emphasis on replayability; the game is haunted in the sense that it remembers previous runs. Without wanting to spoil it, the way one character's gender journey is handled invites questions about the treatment of fictional characters who transition in subsequent engagements with their own media.choiceofgames.com/restore-reflect-retry/ | 2025-10-29 02:30:38 | |
| Elizabeth Bear | The Folded Sky | Very well done alien genders. | 2025-10-28 10:54:06 | ||
| Wren Douglas | fursonas are not enough, i need to be a moss-coated mech | Strange Horizons | The poem portrays a longing for a different kind of body altogether, one that nullifies gender and embraces new modes of existence.strangehorizons.com/wordpress/poetry/fur… | 2025-10-28 05:57:15 | |
| Roque Raquel Salas Rivera | Algarabía | Graywolf Press | Algarabía is an epic poem that follows the journey of Cenex, a trans being who retrospectively narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf. An inhabitant of Algarabía, a colony of Earth in a parallel universe, Cenex struggles to find a name, a body, and a stable home. The song of Cenex weaves and clashes texts by cis writers on trans figures with fragments from historical, legal, and other nonliterary texts. Cenex leads us through his childhood hospitalization, his years as an experimental subject, a brief stay in suburbia, twisted meanderings, and not-so-far-off lands accompanied by a merry band of chosen queers.graywolfpress.org/books/algarabia | 2025-10-27 11:50:13 | |
| Charlie Jane Anders | Lessons in Magic and Disaster | Titan Books (UK), Tor Books (US) | Lessons in Magic and Disaster is a heartfelt and timely contemporary fantasy about a young trans woman witch who begins teaching her mother magic following the death of her mother's wife. It's an intimate portrait of a queer family across generations, an exploration of complicated mothers and motherhood roles, and a nuanced mother-daughter relationship. | 2025-10-24 08:09:33 | |
| Joseph Howard | Harvested Fears | JH Novels | "Harvested Fears" is a supernatural horror story about a group of teens who explore the haunted Cornfield Manor on Halloween night. They uncover a terrifying curse, where scarecrows come to life to harvest souls for a vengeful witch. As the night unfolds, the line between myth and nightmare vanishes, and survival becomes a deadly game. | 2025-10-23 23:57:30 | |
| Danielle Levsky | Dissolution | The Future Fire | Speculative poem: trans and gender nonconforming dystopiafuturefire.net/2025.73/fiction/dissoluti… | 2025-10-21 12:42:01 | |
| Veda Villiers | Unformed | The Future Fire | Speculative poem: genderfluid (and otherwise changeable) characterfuturefire.net/2025.72/fiction/unformed.… | 2025-10-21 12:40:54 | |
| Ziggy Schutz | Featured Exhibit: Drop in a Bucket | The Future Fire | Speculative story: Protagonist is time-travelling trans archivistfuturefire.net/2025.72/fiction/featured.… | 2025-10-21 12:38:56 | |
| Shantell Powell | All That Came From Our Lips Were Lilies | Hedone Books | This non-linear story investigates femininity through the lenses of eco-horror, folklore, and the European witch trials on up to a post-apocalyptic future. It appears in "Silk and Foxglove: a BIPOC Erotic Eco-Horror Anthology."hedonebooks.com/b/dykvx | 2025-10-18 09:38:31 | |
| Shantell Powell | Angakkuq | On Spec Magazine. Issue #129 VOL 34 No 3 | A retelling of a traditional Inuit story in which an angakkuq (ie. shaman) grandmother becomes her granddaughter's husband and provider. It shows the fluidity of gender, and how in the end, the angakkuq decides she would rather be a woman. This poem was a finalist for the Aurora Award. onspec.ca/on-spec-back-issues/ | 2025-10-16 07:27:55 | |
| Ariel Slamet Ries | Strange Bedfellows | HarperAlley | 2025-10-16 04:48:30 | ||
| Kay O'Neill | A Song for You and I | Random House Graphic | 2025-10-16 04:46:33 | ||
| Toshiya Kamei | Kind Daughter | Factor Four Magazine | factorfourmag.com/kind-daughter-by-toshi… | 2025-10-15 13:16:23 | |
| Jordan Kurella | The Death of Mountains | Lethe Press | The novella explores gender through a non-human lens. What gender is an ecosystem? What gender is a Death of permanence? Is gender itself a permanent thing?lethepressbooks.com/product-page/the-dea… | 2025-10-15 12:41:11 | |
| M. L. Krishnan | Measurements Expressed as Units of Separation | Neon Hemlock | Set in a nondescript South Indian town, this is a circuitous, claustrophobic story about obsessive love, shape-shifting snakes, a long-forgotten prince, and a large body of water. Queer desire forms the locus of this story around which the narrative unravels through the long shadow of colonialism, Tamil cosmology, and parallel lifetimes. neonhemlock.com/books/the-crawling-moon | 2025-10-15 11:56:55 | |
| S. C. Mills | His Goose is Cooked | This satirical piece is an amazing commentary on gender roles vis-a-vis pregnancy. metastellar.com/fiction/his-goose-is-coo… | 2025-10-14 16:49:48 | ||
| S.C. Mills | In Sheep's Clothing | Heartlines Spec | I love all of S.C.'s work, but "In Sheep's Clothing," specifically stands out to me as a way to expand and explore gender. As a cis-het woman, I now know a little bit more about how terrifying and vulnerable it must be to become the person you know you should be, while simultaneously transforming into something you know might strike fear into others. This piece, and all of S.C's stories, has allowed me to explore a new level of empathy and a little more understanding. S.C.'s work, and the representation they provide, is crucial to the space.heartlines-spec.com/in-sheeps-clothing/ | 2025-10-13 10:03:39 | |
| Jonathan R. Miller | Animal Control | Animal Control is a literary-speculative novel about power, embodiment, and consent. A young woman in California discovers she can bend animal minds; as that control grows, the book interrogates how influence reconfigures identity, desire, and responsibility. The body becomes both an instrument and a battleground. Care slips toward command, protection toward possession, while questions of autonomy, gender, and alliance surface through three young women (the protagonist and her two friends) whose contrasting temperaments form a volatile equilibrium. Across intimate scenes and civic scale, the narrative asks what it costs to make others “want” what we want, and what happens when that wanting outlives our presence. amazon.com/animal-control-jonathan-r-mil… | 2025-10-12 12:50:01 | ||
| Sylvia Park | Luminous | Simon & Schuster | Although its core theme is exploring grief, Luminous is very deeply concerned with themes of embodiment, desire, identity, relationships, and societal perception, among other things. This is done significantly, but not exclusively, through the place of robots in a near-future society. One of the four major POV characters is a trans man with a complicated (but, I think, on balance positive) relationship with his mostly bionic body, but that's only the most obvious lens here. | 2025-10-11 12:52:15 | |
| Mahaila Smith | Seed Beetle | Stelliform Press | Seed Beetle is a narrative science fiction poetry collection which expands the meaning of queer community by detailing the ways in which a small town rallies against a robotics company that promises utopia but instead delivers non-consensual medical procedures and fascist control. The community's fight against the corporation results in the transformation of both individuals and the social structure of the community.stelliform.press/index.php/product/seed-… | 2025-10-08 13:09:48 | |
| Syr Hayati Beker | What a Fish Looks Like | Stelliform Press | What A Fish Looks Like is a novella by nonbinary author Syr Hayati Beker exploring the role of memory and queer community in climate change, told in margin notes, letters, flyers, and six mutated fairy tales. In these stories, gender is relational and co-created with climate change: in a near-future where people volunteer to host extinct animal DNA, a queer person transforms into a polar bear; a stage manager spontaneously adapts to wildfires by turning into a spider; mychorrizal networks tell a version of Red Riding Hood in decomposition, beyond binaries of life/death/linear time. What A Fish Looks Like invites readers into a world where everything is fluid and we evolve one another in moments of community care, love, grief, longing, and joy. stelliform.press/index.php/product/what-… | 2025-10-08 12:59:02 | |
| C.L. Clark | Fate's Bane | Tordotcom | Tragic sapphic romance with a queernormative setting in ancient history. The endings in particular raise all sorts of questions.torpublishinggroup.com/fates-bane/?isbn=… | 2025-10-08 11:13:39 | |
| Kaitlin Schmidt | The Cartomancer's Curse | self-published | The Cartomancer's Curse is a spicy sapphic romantasy novella set in a wonderful queernorm world. The main character's best friend is non-binary, and practically every relationship alluded to in the book is queer.a.co/d/c2nrtdy | 2025-10-07 20:56:16 | |
| Rae White | Bird Beak + Rock Shard | Tiny Owl Workshop | 'Bird Beak + Rock Shard' is an experimental poem about a trans protagonist fashioning their new body from an assortment of discarded scraps, before joining with other trans people in a movement of resistance and protest. Published in Celestial Bodies (Tiny Owl Workshop, 2024), edited by Aidan Demmers.avidreader.com.au/p/far-flung?barcode=97… | 2025-10-07 14:51:12 | |
| Aidan DemmersEdited by Aidan Demmers. With work by Annalise JensenKonstanz Muller HeringJulian LawrenceDawn TaskerCaity WebsterMarlee Jane WardAidan DemmersTreffery WebbRae WhiteLuca Masnata. | Celestial Bodies | Tiny Owl Workshop | What does it mean, to exist in a queer body? To love, to lust, to rebuild and rework and miss something intangible? In this anthology of Australian sci-fi, seven writers and three artists explore these questions through a series of weird and wonderful dimensions, times, and worlds. avidreader.com.au/p/far-flung?barcode=97… | 2025-10-07 14:37:01 | |
| Griffin Rockwell | Listen--a Poetic Creature | Interstellar Flight Press | This book-length cento stitches together classic science fiction, fantasy, and horror works from the canon into a new poetic creature that uses gender and the body as its underlying theme. interstellarflightpress.com/listen.html | 2025-10-07 13:13:59 | |
| Kemi Ashing-Giwa | The King Must Die | Saga Press | The story takes place in a queernorm world where people assign themselves a gender at their coming of age ceremonies; the characters discuss their journeys toward their decisions. One of the main characters is trans.simonandschuster.com/books/the-king-must… | 2025-10-06 19:02:09 | |
| Benjamin Rosenbaum | The Ghost and the Golem | Choice of Games | A text-based game: an “interactive historical fantasy novel” about life in a Jewish village in 1881. You can “Play as male, female, or nonbinary; cis or trans; intersex or not; gay, straight, bi, or asexual,” and your choices influence the ways that the story plays out.choiceofgames.com/ghost-and-the-golem/ | 2025-10-06 11:27:18 | |
| Sacha Lamb | The Forbidden Book | Levine Querido | This book explores gender in Jewish history -- it's set in the Pale of Settlement. Its protagonist, Sorrel, is a genderqueer lesbian who decides on the eve of her wedding that she will run away rather than getting married. She disguises herself as a man -- and then is possessed by a dybbuk. This book explores traditional Jewish ideas of gender, as well as magical gender challenges like possession. | 2025-10-06 07:40:59 | |
| Donya Todd | The Witch's Egg | Avery Hill Publishing | This is a graphic novel that tells the story of a witch and an angel who fall in love. Unfortunately, angels falling in love tends to have apocalyptic consequences -- this is a story about the witch and their children working to unwind all of them. It's a strange and eccentric story about biological/magical determinism and fighting against that. | 2025-10-06 07:35:21 | |
| Kristina Ten | Bunny Ears | Nightmare Magazine | Hannah Gessen has just turned thirteen when her parents drop her off at Colden Hills Music Camp. It’s the last place on earth she wants to be: she’s no good at making friends, she hates the way she looks in a bathing suit, and she lives in fear of the boys’ cabin stringing her period underwear up the flagpole. But over the next week, Hannah learns that there’s a whole lot more to be scared of at Colden Hills. Something haunts this particular camp: something feral and dangerously alluring. When Hannah’s own secrets unspool along with the secrets of the camp, she’s forced to confront an unspoken loss in her family, her evolving feelings about gender, and her growing suspicions about why her parents (who have always wanted her to be “a real girl, a girl girl”) brought her here.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/bunny-ear… | 2025-10-04 13:36:40 | |
| Lucy Lapinska | Some Body Like Me | Gollancz | Explores sex, gender and sexuality in a world where artificial doubles of humans are commonplace. | 2025-10-04 12:18:49 | |
| Dianna GunnRaluca BalasaA.V. BlackMeg CandaleriaMia DaliaA.H. DavisonKelli EtheridgeR. HavenAmanda Cecilia LangEnoli LeeOndine MayorAllay ReiSam RosewildeElise ScottSoyam SiddhaBogi TakácsAsh ValeJustine WhiteKT WagnerAnne Wilkins | Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror | Renaissance | 2025-10-04 09:12:15 | ||
| Maya Deane | In Your Shadow | Essential Dreams Press | The story is part of the book Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology. The protagonist is trans and is also reincarnated (like all humans are) with gender varying with each new life, while the elf companion, like all elves, lives one long life and changes gender at will. | 2025-10-04 08:02:56 | |
| C.L. Hellisen | Makers | Essential Dreams Press | The story plays with gender, sexuality, and beauty standards. It's part of the book Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology | 2025-10-04 07:23:56 | |
| Lyndsie Manusos | From These Dark Abodes | Psychopomp | This story explores the depths of longing, often crushing difficulty, and peculiar hope of life postpartum. Two imprisoned women seek escape from a mysterious house's skeletal revelries, and the journey is memory laden and full of grief, but also boundless love. (SPOILER: a sapphic love story, too).psychopomp.com/from-these-dark-abodes/ | 2025-10-04 05:52:49 | |
| Cecilia Tan | Large Emotional Models | Sunday Morning Transport | This story contrasts our current political and societal moment and the huge numbers of things that we can't change or reverse (time, aging, grief, attacks on academia & trans folk) with the things that our protagonist does change (pronouns, gender expression, countries, their feelings about certain things) while recognizing that soul-searching and space-exploration are ineffably twins...? sundaymorningtransport.com/p/large-emoti… | 2025-10-03 21:20:04 | |
| Mari Ness | Care for Lightning | Uncanny Magazine | A reexamination of the Greek goddess Hera.uncannymagazine.com/article/care-for-lig… | 2025-10-03 16:06:00 | |
| D. W. West | Lily Facsimile | Inner Worlds | This short, quiet scifi story perfectly conjures the ghostliness of living inside someone else's idea of you, and in an identity that doesn't line up with what you feel.inner-worlds.ghost.io/lily-facsimile-by-… | 2025-10-03 14:37:05 | |
| Sabahat Ali Wani | They Fear Our Open Hair | Inner Worlds | An unnerving, experimental horror story which begins in the aftermath of an act of gender-based violence and imagines a woman's hair as an uncanny force of vengeance. The repeated phrases and fragments of language, the blurred identities of the two sisters, and the gaps in the narrative are disorienting, and all the while the drumbeat of misogynist violence feels inescapable. The images in this story stayed with me for days.inner-worlds.ghost.io/they-fear-our-open… | 2025-10-03 14:20:08 | |
| Theodore Hill | Euonym | Inner Worlds | A short but powerful story about our relationships with our names, and about what can happen when we share our true self with another. I know that this story spoke very deeply to many of our trans and nonbinary readers.inner-worlds.ghost.io/inner-worlds-5-euo… | 2025-10-03 13:53:33 | |
| Toshiya Kamei | Sworn Brothers | Cutleaf | cutleafjournal.com/content/sworn-brother… | 2025-10-03 13:42:36 | |
| Nisi Shawl | Making Amends | Aqueduct Press | This collection of connected stories about people sent to a prison planet incorporates a number of gender ideas. The people sent to the prison -- for unspecified crimes that could include transgressing gender rules -- are downloaded into new bodies (possibly ones that represent their victims), but not allowed to be put in a body that does not represent their gender assigned at birth. Yet as the prisoners settle the planet, they create societies that allow people to redefine their gender as well as setting up marriage partnerships of more than two people. aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-268-… | 2025-10-02 22:14:24 | |
| Plangdi Neple | Happy Dancing Rejects | Flame Tree Publishing | This story explores what it means to push through the tiredness that comes with living in a world designed to reject queerness, and how to choose to be happy.flametreepublishing.com/were-wolf-short-… | 2025-10-01 14:36:39 | |
| Jubilee Cho | Wishing Well, Wishing Well | Atthis Arts | The author was a young Korean transwoman who passed away from this year. She wanted to write a fairy tale Middle Grade book with five princesses. The writing is gentle and achingly beautiful. atthisarts.com/product/wishing-well-wish… | 2025-09-30 17:54:34 | |
| Seth Haddon | Volatile Memory | Tordotcom | This is an intriguing variation on trans issues. You have a trans character, plus a mask that, when previously embodied, had a gender, but is uncertain now. Through the book there is a fluidity of gender expression that I've never seen before. If a large part of science fiction is making a metaphor or concept literal to see how it plays out, this is it. | 2025-09-30 14:59:38 | |
| Pat Murphy | The Adventures of Mary Darling | Tachyon Publications | Pat Murphy has completely re-worked turn-of-the-19th-century popular literature and made it subversive for the 21st century. Thank you, Pat! (And I say this as a former child who loved J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan.)tachyonpublications.com/product/the-adve… | 2025-09-30 11:21:49 | |
| Jendia Gammon | Doomflower | Encyclopocalypse Publications | Represented within the book are female and nonbinary characters. | 2025-09-30 09:21:41 | |
| Chisom Umeh | From Across Time | Clarkesworld Magazine | This story explores queer love through the lens of time travel, politics and longing. A great story that's also a finalist for the 2025 Nommo Awards clarkesworldmagazine.com/umeh_12_24/ | 2025-09-30 08:19:32 | |
| E.D.E. Bell | Sexy Garlic | Atthis Arts | I wrote this collection, and I would be honored for it to be considered.(december release; link not yet up) | 2025-09-30 05:25:45 | |
| Joyce Chng | Wolf's Path | Atthis Arts | The exploration of gender in this collection is extraordinary. Yes, I published it and it also has my strongest recommendation for consideration.atthisarts.com/product/wolfs-path/ | 2025-09-30 05:23:31 | |
| June Orchid Parker | Fury Be My Goddess | New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #6 | In recognition of the Astartha trio of short stories in New Edge Sword & Sorcery #2, #4, #6 (2023-2025). Strong, raw, no-punches-pulled trans storytelling in the subgenre of sword & sorcery, championed by trans woman Jessica Amanda Salmonson in the 70s. This trilogy of shorts builds tremendously with each entry. They are June Orchid Parker's first published work. newedgeswordandsorcery.com/ | 2025-09-29 22:55:01 | |
| Maxwell Gold | Songs of Enough: An Inferno All My Own | Hippocampus Press | Songs of Enough is a fever dream exploration taking the reader on an epic, hallucinatory journey of cosmic proportions from the origins of the Cyber Gods to the edges of a surrealistic, metaphysical hellscape. “When the cities of plastic men found yet another ridiculous contrivance to feed their cyber-lust . . .” Maxwell I. Gold presents fifteen cycles of poetry, prose, and prose poetry that extend the bounds of language to their uttermost limits, while etching the hapless state of humanity in the modern age. | 2025-09-29 17:50:43 | |
| Milan Sno | Daevas | RWB Publishing | Daevas is a queer dark fantasy that leans heavily into the literary yet still rooted in fantasy. It explores identity and intimacy through myth, blood, and memory, with characters who love each other fiercely even when it’s dangerous to do so. Its queerness is central, complex, and powerful. They're not reduced to a side plot or stereotype. It’s dark, yes, but it’s also about connection and endurance, and the ways queer love survives even in the hardest places.amazon.com/daevas-i-milan-sno/dp/b0fmnv9… | 2025-09-24 11:50:32 | |
| Cliff Pervocracy | Question 3 | self | Content notes: politics, capital punishment. Dystopian horror alluding to Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and to electoral referenda that threaten to take away the rights of people in marginalized groups.pervocracy.com/art/fiction/question-3/ | 2025-09-24 06:59:19 | |
| Tessa Gratton | The Mercy Makers | Orbit | The dominant culture in the book has a very different concept of femininity than the English-speaking West, and we see several other approaches to it over the course of the book. The book as a whole considers bio-essentialism/the gender binary ridiculous, and the imposing of it an outrage. | 2025-09-22 01:43:29 | |
| Alex Kingsley | Empress of Dust | Space Wizard Science Fantasy | A team containing a trans male, a cis female, a cis male, and a nonbinay person in a post-apocalyptic future scavenge for parts. They meet a desertwalker, an intelligent giant crab, who also happens to be trans male. I like that this questions what trans means to another species and why.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/book/empre… | 2025-09-15 16:44:54 | |
| Edited by J.S. Fields, William C. Tracy, and Heather Tracy See aboveAshleigh MartinMK Hardy (Morag Hannah and Erin Hardee)Nathan ChuTravis BaldreeStewart C BakerKayla WhittleJoel GloverCaye MarshKira NeuEmma NewmanJ.S. FieldsJes HonardScarlet PassmoreSylvie AlthoffMary Robinette KowalJasmine GowerSiena BuchananSeanan McGuireBeáta FülöpDanielle WoolheadHeather Tracy | Lesbians in Space: Where No Man Has Gone Before | Space Wizard Science Fantasy | This is an anthology of "umbrella Sapphic" short stories, including cis female, trans female, nonbinary, alien, Artificial Intelligences, and feminine dragon. It asks the question, what is lesbian, and how do we see them in science fiction and fantasy stories. spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/book/lesbi… | 2025-09-15 16:41:29 | |
| Samir Morató | möbius loop | khōréō | A heart-wringing and -tending journey through cycles of violence toward the disruptive possibilities of forgiveness opened by making peace with oneself and being in the infinite now. khoreomag.com/fiction/mobius-loop/ | 2025-09-13 10:32:06 | |
| Isaac Fellman | Notes from a Regicide | Tor Books | A story of a trans family in an SF world, lingering on what love, family and existence look like in that context, amidst the backdrop of a revolution whose mark lingers on those who lived through it. | 2025-09-11 07:02:08 | |
| D. Harrigon | Desolation: The Overdue Library | For novella it contains a great diversity of female voices.amazon.com/desolation-overdue-library-d-… | 2025-09-04 14:12:02 | ||
| Joseph Howard | Mariki: Spiritual Awakening | JH Novels | Prepare yourself for an adventure that will forever change the immortal life of Mariki. Five years after landing in the New World, Mariki has isolated himself from humans, fearing the heritage that resides within him. Upon returning a lost boy to his tribe, Mariki must face off against a horde of Vikings looking to rape, pillage, and destroy the tribes that reside on the land. While Mariki is rediscovering who he is and who he can be, he must fight off his inner demons, confront a very powerful Viking whom he once called his friend, and journey through the land, interacting with his inner spirit, spiritual beings, and encountering challenges from the past, present, and future. Here, Mariki looks to complete his journey.jhnovels.wixsite.com/read/the-vampire-sa… | 2025-09-04 00:14:06 | |
| Joseph Howard | Space Quest: Uncharted Space | JH Novels | The newly commissioned Johnson Explorer is embarking on a mission to an unknown universe in this ridiculous space comedy. This ship's crew, however, isn't normal at all. They are a diverse, bizarre group and often dance at the edge of chaos. Brace yourself for the adventures of Captain Rey Turner, known for sharp thinking; Commander Lyra Zara, a stickler for rules; Lt. Commander BOC, who can be a bit cringe-worthy and unconventional; Lt. Shawn Bratt, the resident joker and boundary-pushing artist, and the enigmatic Mr. Poopy. It's not a typical, family-friendly bedtime story of science fiction.jhnovels.wixsite.com/read/about-1-1 | 2025-09-04 00:10:30 | |
| Sue Dawes | The Mune | Gold SF | A group of surplus, post-partum Victorian women, finding themselves shipwrecked, make new lives on a mysterious island, shaking off the shackles of gender for their survival and raising their children without gender assumptions and restraints. | 2025-09-03 23:01:58 | |
| Zardoz Logan | THE DESTINY OF THE NADHIR | Amazon | In a future where humanity has built its sky-cities above a world it has drained, an uncomfortable truth begins to pulse beneath the surface: the planet, Nadh, is not dead. It is awakening. Valen, a brilliant scientist plagued by a mysterious ailment, feels Nadh's agony like no other. As his civilization, the Nadhir, grapples with increasingly frequent catastrophes, his mentor, the powerful Zor, pushes for forced evolution—a desperate, final gamble on technological control. But Valen, guided by the reclusive biologist Nara and the almost mystical perceptions of a young girl, will discover that true salvation lies not in dominion, but in an ancient, forgotten bond. "THE DESTINY OF THE NADHIR" is a breathtaking journey between science and spirituality, between the grandeur of a civilization at its zenith and the humility of a planet reclaiming its voice. amazon.com/destiny-nadhir-zardoz-logan-e… | 2025-08-23 06:29:37 | |
| Allee Mead | Isaac | Space Wizard Science Fantasy | This novella explores how one woman struggles with loneliness, how a society focused on romantic relationships can contribute to that isolation, and how quiet women tend to suffer without much attention. The main character is aspec (on the asexual/aromantic spectrum), and her story is juxtaposed with the story of her two fathers.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/book/isaac | 2025-08-18 14:34:31 | |
| Livia J. Elliot | Dance With Me | Self-Published | In Dance With Me, Livia J. Elliot spins a deceptively enchanting and intimately vulnerable coming-of-age fantasy tale that explores emotional trauma, identity, depression, trust, and love in all its devastating beauty. Elliot just knows perfectly when to be overt in the messaging and when to hold back to make room for personal interpretation, which is exactly what makes her storytelling so clever and effective to me. Especially the inclusion of the experimental strike-through text which conveyed the way that depression completely overtook Lyra’s actions and thoughts by overriding her deep fears and intense desperation really stood out to me; it showcases exactly how so many people are suffering in silence, hiding behind the smiles and lying to themselves most of all. The result is a clever, dark, psychological fairy tale. amazon.com/dp/b0fcd1hxd6 | 2025-08-14 22:40:37 | |
| Livia J. Elliot | The Genesis of Change | Self-Published | Elliot shatters conventions and expectations in The Genesis of Change, a mind-bending standalone prequel novella to the visionary Records of the Orders series. Filled with ancient shapeshifting eldritch alchemists, philosophy-based alchemical magic, boldly experimental storytelling, and deeply thought-provoking themes. This novella stands out as a turning point in the fantasy genre, defying conventional storytelling with its deep dive into the complexities of human nature and the mysterious art of alchemy. The narrative skillfully explores themes of transformation, power, and the heavy cost of knowledge, all woven together with elegant prose that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant. amazon.com/dp/b0cthq99g2 | 2025-08-14 22:37:52 | |
| Ry Herman | This Princess Kills Monsters | The Dial Press | penguinrandomhouse.com/books/753910/this… | 2025-08-12 09:48:34 | |
| Ron Kaiser | Mystralhaven | Fantastic Books | This novel, thought written by a man, explores feminism and the exploitation of women in a fantasy setting. The main character must cope with a patriarchal society that wishes to objectify and control her, while she learns to harness her abilities. It stands out in that we have a male author showing true empathy for the plight of women, which makes him a great role model for young men in this culture. | 2025-07-30 18:31:47 | |
| adrienne maree brown | Ancestors | AK Press | Final installment of the Grievers trilogyakpress.org/ancestors.html | 2025-07-25 06:31:50 | |
| Laura J Fitzwilson | The Fool | Self | The Fool's titular character and romantic lead is a castle fool and as such, in the society of a fantasy version of Australia, is denied name, gender or any other signifiers that might indicate that it's a person, including the record of its birth and death. The fool glories in its role and considers pronouns as sounds someone might make if they wanted its attention.amazon.com/dp/0975620231 | 2025-07-15 16:56:48 | |
| Maxime Trencavel | The Matriarch Messiah: An Epic Romantic Suspense Thriller | Tail of the Bird Books | The Matriarch Messiah is a speculative fiction blend of genres. The characters represent different nations, cultures, gender persuasion, and faith which they must bridge to find the solution to an ancient prophecy. Reviewers so far appreciate the depth of emotions and characters.amazon.com/matriarch-messiah-romantic-su… | 2025-07-02 09:16:54 | |
| Edited by Matthew David Goodwin, Alex Hernandez, Sara Rivera Lesley Téllez; Wenmimareba Klobah Collins; Richie Narvaez; Yoss; Daniel Figueroa-Arias; Eugene Speakes; Lysz Flo; Joy Castro; Florencia Manóvil; Sarah Dalton; Carlos Julio Paredes Minango; Rolando André López; Amanda Torres; Rolando André López; Olga García Echeverría; Roxane Llanque; Illimani Ferreira; Daniel Jose Ruiz; Gabriela Santiago; Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos; Rodrigo Culagovski; César L. DeLeón; Osmani R. Alcaraz-Ochoa; E.G. Condé; Kristian Macaron; Ruth Joffre | Not Your Papi's Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope | Mouthfeel Press | Not Your Papi’s Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope is the final installment of the Latinx Archive speculative fiction trilogy. The first two anthologies, Latinx Rising and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, were designed to demonstrate the history and vibrancy of the Latinx speculative. This third anthology summons the innovative utopian visions and radical hope needed to directly face the environmental and social problems of our current moment. Poems and short stories in the collection, including those of Lesley Téllez, Wenmimareba Klobah Collins, Roxane Llanque, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Osmani R. Alcaraz-Ochoa, and Rolando André Lopez, explore gender and queerness within these visions of radical hope. mouthfeelbooks.com/product/not-your-papi… | 2025-06-23 08:16:24 | |
| Eden Robins | Remember You Will Die | Sourcebooks Landmark | sourcebooks.com/9781728256030-remember-y… | 2025-06-21 08:55:36 | |
| Debbie Urbanski | Portalmania | Simon & Schuster | The stories in Portalmania challenge confining definitions of marriage, intimacy, and love, while also exploring the harm caused by ideas of heteronormativity and compulsory sexuality.simonandschuster.com/books/portalmania/d… | 2025-05-27 10:50:48 | |
| Camila Sosa Villada | I’m A Fool To Want You: Stories | Other Press | otherpress.com/product/im-a-fool-to-want… | 2025-05-06 15:22:06 | |
| Liza Wemakor | Schadenfreude | Fiyah Lit Mag | This is a short story.fiyahlitmag.com/shop/issues/2025-issues/… | 2025-05-06 15:17:54 | |
| Liza Wemakor | Loving Safoa | Neon Hemlock Press | This is a novella.neonhemlock.com/books/loving-safoa-liza-… | 2025-05-06 15:14:55 | |
| Bryan VanDyke | In Our Likeness | Little A | A novel about the nature of agency, identity and control in the context of world altering technology created by a woman whose creation is usurped by men who don’t think twice about claiming her accomplishments for themselves. amazon.com/our-likeness-novel-bryan-vand… | 2025-04-27 06:35:52 | |
| 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 | For Where There Are Harps | 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 |