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 2025 or 2026. (For works published in 2025, check to make sure they weren’t on the 2025 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 Awards, so please don’t use a work’s presence on this list to promote the work. (If a work wins an Award or appears on an Honor List, you can use that to promote the work.)
Recommendations for this year’s Awards close in late 2026. (Recommendations after that will go to the 2027 award.) The 2026 awards will be given in 2027, location to be determined.
To let us know something related to recommendations that doesn’t fit in the form, email recommendations@otherwiseaward.org.
The 2026 Otherwise Awards Recommendations
| Author | Title | Publisher | Comments | Sub Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dare Segun Falowo | Sindi Fair | ZamaShort | An Archillean re-telling of Cinderella rooted in African mythology that wonderfully and gently subverts.amazon.com/gp/product/b0fry5h31r | 2026-09-04 05:54:18 | |
| Al Hess | Shake Out the Ghosts | Angry Robot Books | angryrobotbooks.com/books/shake-out-the-… | 2026-09-03 01:46:39 | |
| Ciel Pierlot | Terms of Service | Angry Robot Books | angryrobotbooks.com/books/terms-of-servi… | 2026-09-03 01:45:38 | |
| Khan Wong | Down in the Sea of Angels | Angry Robot Books | The book focuses on queer characters. angryrobotbooks.com/books/down-in-the-se… | 2026-09-03 01:43:43 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | "Hologram with Benefits" | Neon Dystopia | "Hologram with Benefits" concerns Tiffany, a Catholic woman who is struggling with Church teachings while constantly falling into sin with her erotic holographic companion, Lenny Justin Chiharu. Gender is explored in this near future tale through Tiffany's unconventional taste in men as well as her struggle to follow Church teachings when her orientation doesn't fit inside the expected mold.neondystopia.com/?p=100043248 | 2026-09-02 13:01:07 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | "Momo's Kite" | NonBinary Review (Zoetic Press) | "Momo's Kite" concerns a trans robot, Momo, who was originally created as a "fetish bot" but finds love, acceptance, and happiness with an elderly woman, Fran, a beachside gift shop owner who longs for a family.zoeticpress.com/nbr-online/2026/7/15/mom… | 2026-08-31 06:21:22 | |
| Simon Stålenhag | Sunset at Zero Point | Simon and Schuster | A queer coming of age tale in the shadow of secluded military exclusion zone. Melancholic but hopeful it looks at small towns, masculinity, friendship and more in a world not far removed from our own.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/sunset-at-z… | 2026-08-30 06:01:49 | |
| Christopher Caldwell | Call and Response | Neon Hemlock | A collection of stories focussing on black mostly queer characters explores the fullness and diversity lives and reactions to world both natural and supernatural. A doubled structure, returning to the worlds or characters in the second half allows us to see the consequences play out in ways expected and unexpected.neonhemlock.com/books/call-and-response | 2026-08-30 05:57:05 | |
| Hiron Ennes | The Works of Vermin | Tor Nightfire | In a city warped by changes, political, artistic and physical this book uses that mutability to play on gender and sexuality with it's characters. Both in who they are but also in their response to the strictures put on them by the dominant society in it's setting.panmacmillan.com/authors/hiron-ennes/the… | 2026-08-30 05:51:25 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | Remy de Montfort of Dubcon Palace | Horrific Scribblings | "Remy de Montfort of Dubcon Palace" is an existential horror story about a white male indentured servant in 1686 Barbados whose sexual exploitation by a wealthy plantation owner represents a more typically female pattern of captivity. Moreover, he discovers the control over his enslaved life runs far deeper than the island and master constraining him.horrificscribblings.com/remydemontfort/ | 2026-08-29 13:48:34 | |
| Amy Kitcher | Tabula Rasa | Seize the Press | 'Tabula Rasa' unsettles gender by routing it through an alien lens. The narrator, one of the tentacled Sist, speaks only as 'us', a collective, genderless pronoun resisting human sex and gender categories, even as humans force femininity onto them. As a feminised sex worker, the narrator penetrates male clients, reversing assumptions that penetration signifies male agency and receptivity female passivity. But the reversal doesn't liberate the Sist: economic coercion, fetishisation and contempt structure every encounter, showing that anatomy alone doesn't determine power. The story satirises human masculinity through phallic graffiti and monuments to territorial virility. The narrator's closing act imagines a 'tabula rasa' beyond imposed femininity and phallic dominance and asks what happens when an oppressed, female-coded figure refuses to be forgiving or morally exemplary.seizethepress.com/2026/01/30/tabula-rasa… | 2026-08-29 02:35:07 | |
| Dennison Smith | The Westward Hours | Extraordinary Books | The future former United States in The Westward Hours is a riven country in which notions of womanhood and a woman's place have reverted to fundamentalist Christian ideals - which allows at least one of the (female) characters to carry out radically subversive activities below the radar of the surveillance state. The novel also explores resilience and strength as demonstrated by the elderly grandparents of one of the protagonists, and, most fascinatingly, contrasts the terrifying duo at the heart of the novel - the Twins - by counterposing the brash psychopath Tom with his physically more imposing sister Tam, who is more silent, more obedient ... and deadlier. amazon.com/westward-hours-author/dp/1917… | 2026-08-29 01:32:34 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | "No Kingdom for a Horse" | Epona Muse Publishing | In order to secure a new, exclusive trade route for his family's business, Henry Trevalu must deliver an ornery Appaloosa mare named Lottie to a royal family on Planet Naturanu. Upon arriving at the palace, he finds himself accused of debauching Princess Elahen and forced into marriage. After all, a Naturat princess riding a mount with a man walking alongside her into the throne room is an unmistakable admission of guilt. This story reverses expected gender roles as aromantic asexual Henry finds himself in a situation tantamount to groom kidnapping.publishing.eponaauthorsolutions.com/prod… | 2026-08-28 17:59:02 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | The Serpent, the Dove, and the Soaring Raptor | Adventures Bookzine (OffBeatReads) | When an unflattering and incriminating tabloid article exposes Trevalu Intergalactic Spice Company's head of supply chain ethics as a runaway comfort officer, Henry finds himself investigated by two agents from the Interstellar Investigation Commission. If found guilty of aiding, abetting, harboring, and hiring a man guilty of desertion, he could be punished with a three-year prison sentence at Port Songroi Jail while his friend is forcibly returned to the "Soaring Raptor" to fulfill the remainder of his sexually exploitive contract. This far future novelette with an aro ace protagonist explores gender in a post-sex work setting.amazon.com/adventures-special-issue-2026… | 2026-08-28 14:48:29 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | "To Escape a Soaring Raptor" | Adventures Bookzine (OffBeatReads) | When a shipping problem forces Henry Trevalu to visit Port Songroi during Fleet Week, he runs into an acquaintance who wants to desert the Interstellar One merchant spaceship, "Soaring Raptor," where he works as a contracted comfort officer (read: ship's prostitute). Unfortunately, fleeing the planet with a registered prostitute is punishable with a hefty fine and three years in prison--so Henry and his friend better not get caught. This far future story features an aro ace protagonist and challenges gender stereotypes about sex work.amazon.com/adventures-special-issue-2026… | 2026-08-28 14:00:08 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | "My Own Private Shuttle Ho" | Adventures Bookzine (OffBeatReads) | While traveling to a nine-day Lenten retreat to recover from his harrowing experience on Zakon-4, Henry Trevalu discovers a male prostitute stowaway on his private ship. Stuck together in deep space for three days, Henry and his uninvited guest, Piper, have a lot of mutual prejudices to unpack to keep their journey from spiraling into a purgatorial trial. This story explores gender expansion by challenging stereotypes about sex work.amazon.com/adventures-special-issue-2026… | 2026-08-28 13:44:49 | |
| Sunyi Dean | The Girl With A Thousand Faces | Tor Books | This book features well-rounded women characters who take main prominence in the plot. There are older women; monstrous women; vicious women, all treated as full, complicated people by the narrative. Additionally, the body-switching speculative elements of this ghost story are directly compared to a gender-nonconforming experience by a trans woman character in the text. | 2026-08-26 08:22:35 | |
| Aud Connelly | Wings in the Valley | This book centers on two matriarchal fantasy races (fauns and harpies) who are at war. Despite both tribes being controlled by females, they have distinctly opposite worldviews that lead to violent incidents. As the story progresses, two males, a faun and a harpy, end up going on a roadtrip together, falling in love, and raising a newly hatched harpy egg. In particular the very masculine male faun ends up with some pretty strong pregnancy imagery attached to him. The way masculinity is presented in this novel is very different from most LOTR-esque fantasy fare. Polyamory and queerness are normal, but jealousy and misunderstandings still happen.amazon.com/gp/product/b0dv9w1lz8 | 2026-08-25 16:35:18 | ||
| Dani Finn | Fly by Night | A butterfly and a moth fall in love and decide to procreate. It's a sweet story about two lovers who maybe don't have the expected "bits" and how they fit together despite that.danifinn.itch.io/fly-by-night | 2026-08-25 16:22:31 | ||
| Emmylou Kotzé | Runaway | Pink Hydra Press | This novella focuses on a deeply closeted gay knight, Gathir, who's consumed by the rigidity of gender norms in his world. He's ashamed of his relationship with his male lover Zaras, whom he deeply loves, to the extent that he wishes that Zaras could transform into a woman. This bitterness festers until it erupts in tragedy when the princess Gathir is responsible for refuses her own deeply gendered role by running away with a group of nomads.amazon.com/dp/0639843069 | 2026-08-25 16:01:08 | |
| E.J. LeRoy | Pleading His Belly on Zakon-4 | The Whumpy Printing Press | Catholic. Alien. Mpreg. Those three words have probably never been said together until the publication of "Pleading His Belly on Zakon-4." A standalone novella starring recurring protagonist, Henry Trevalu, this story explores the conflict of faith within a twenty-two year old, Catholic, aromantic asexual man who has just allowed his hermaphroditic alien cellmate to impregnate him so his unjust death sentence will be commuted to exile. thewhumpyprintingpress.com/books/novella… | 2026-08-24 11:17:24 | |
| Lorraine Schein | Spectral Graffiti | foofawraw press, Quotidian Bagatelle, Crumbs | It shows how new art is not always understood at first, especially gay art or art made by other minorities. But those who are without prejudice and perceptive (like angels and God) can recognize and appreciate art that is truly new and expands our idea of what art is and that any gender can make it.qb.foofaraw.press/spectral-graffiti/ | 2026-08-20 10:21:53 | |
| Polly Schattel | Crater Girl | JournalStone | "Crater Girl" is about Greta Tyler, a 30-something trans social worker in the rural south who's struggling with bills, a new life and career, a vindictive ex-wife, and oh yeah--a rogue billionaire scientist who kidnapped her best friend and may use her in an inter-dimensional ceremony to invoke a god. "Crater Girl" plays with gender and genre. The book itself may be trans. Noir-y and slyly funny, it reads like the love child of Elmore Leonard and Edgar Rice Burroughs ... if she was MTF and neurotic, liked good coffee, suffered from self-sabotage, and was bossed around by her cat. amazon.com/dp/1685101844?lv=shuf&cha… | 2026-08-19 09:56:26 | |
| Ash Vale | consumed | Nightmare | This work explores the complicated nature of being AFAB nonbinary, and how love and consumption are intimately connected to the construction of womanliness, and to the transformation from a gendered to an agendered existence.nightmare-magazine.com/podcast/consumed/ | 2026-08-18 11:55:16 | |
| Holly Walrath | Every Son a Reaver | Flame Tree Publishing Anthology: Morgana le Fay: New & Ancient Arthurian Tales (April, 2025) | This short story expands the Arthur legend by focusing on Morgana le Fay's highly gendered role as the caretaker for the dead. amazon.com/morgana-fay-ancient-arthurian… | 2026-08-18 11:54:21 | |
| Holly Walrath | Ghost in the Shell | Radon | A highly personal poem about old selves, queerness, and the body. radonjournal.com/issue9/ghost-in-the-she… | 2026-08-18 11:52:37 | |
| R.A. E. | Companion Plants | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:49:53 | |
| Lorenzo Barajas | Firefly in a Graveyard | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:48:19 | |
| Ennis Rook Bashe | On Leaving the Hivemind | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:46:48 | |
| A. Simons | Fourteen | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:45:51 | |
| Ori Diskett | Vwylen in the Arboretum (Feels like a Whore) | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:41:55 | |
| Rae White | a bird in the palm makes for a fantastical t4t date | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:40:34 | |
| Donna Dante Marie Gary Marcus | Things I Carried Coming Into this World | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:39:00 | |
| Penny Molesso | Faith Is a Cell, Dividing | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:37:06 | |
| Mari Ness | Ah Yes, the Trick | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026.interstellarflightpress.com/infinitebran… | 2026-08-18 11:35:45 | |
| Petra Kuppers | Blackberry Ball (Poem + Statement) | Interstellar Flight Magazine | This poem is part of the series "Infinite Branches", which explores the intersection of the speculative, queerness, and disability through poetry. Some topics of the poems include: gender, sexuality, the body, survival, and climate change. Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt. The final anthology will be published in 2027, but each poem has been individually published online in 2026. interstellarflightpress.com/blackberryba… | 2026-08-18 11:25:43 | |
| Nicole Field | Neither Older Nor Larger (Omniboz anthology) | Stars and Sabers | This short reimagines Ozma/Kip of Oz as a bigender character | 2026-08-18 11:05:23 | |
| Amanda J. Mcgee | A River Wide | Interstellar Flight Press | A witchy tale of sisterhood and survival. "Mountains have deep, dark hearts, and those hearts are carved by water. Deep in the shadowed hollers of Appalachia, Rhia Blackburn has always kept her powers and her heart buried. Around here, the river whispers dark secrets, the earth remembers every cut, and survival is a skill women pass down in blood. But when her cousin Amey is kidnapped up the mountain, Rhia is forced to confront the terror of her home and her own troubled history. To save her, Rhia must trust her powers—and herself—because in Appalachia, family comes first and water always finds a way. An Appalachian horror novella about family, grief, and the stubborn strength it takes to survive. "interstellarflightpress.com/ariverwide.h… | 2026-08-18 11:00:51 | |
| EL Chen | Sweetside Motel | Interstellar Flight Press | A harrowing tale of xenophobia in the pandemic and gender abuse survival. "With the pandemic sweeping the globe, Sarah Ng makes a desperate escape from Toronto to start a new life. But when her car breaks down in Sweetside, an isolated country town, she is forced to quarantine with two charming but disquieting brothers who run the local urban legend: a decaying roadside inn nicknamed the “Suicide Motel”. Trapped between the threat of xenophobic violence and her dark past, she must convince the brothers to help her escape. But how can she know who to trust when everyone, including herself, has their ghosts? E.L. Chen’s contemporary twist on the gothic novella is an unnerving exploration of fear and what it means to be haunted."interstellarflightpress.com/sweetsidemot… | 2026-08-18 10:59:23 | |
| Marlee Jane Ward | The Forgetting Navigations | Interstellar Flight Press | The Forgetting Navigations asks: "What if there was a serial killer in space?" Evey has survived a space cult, but can she survive her abuser? "Abandoned in a lifepod in the vastness of space, Evey is left for dead. When the bookish freight hauler Shirr rescues her, the two form a connection over tea and unspoken trauma. Just when things feel safe again, their peace is threatened by a relic of their past, and they’re forced to embark on a mission across the stars to protect themselves and others from the threat of violence. THE FORGETTING NAVIGATIONS is a brutally honest exploration of what it means to be a survivor, set against the brilliant backdrop of the cosmos."interstellarflightpress.com/theforgettin… | 2026-08-18 10:57:53 | |
| Emma Osborne | Grief Eater | Interstellar Flight Press | GRIEF EATER is a transgressive queer horror novella that situates queerness as monstrous and gender as meaningless when the body is undead. "A transgressive, gory examination of queer identity and found family, GRIEF EATER sinks its teeth into trauma and what it means to be devoured by grief."interstellarflightpress.com/griefeater.h… | 2026-08-18 10:55:11 | |
| Kai Ash | The Boy Maeve | Hardie Grant Children's Publishing | He only knows two things for sure: his name is Maeve and he’s a boy. In this Australian spec-fic YA set in 2002, an adopted 14-year-old trans boy discovers the truth about his biological parents … and himself. In some ways, being a boy who everyone sees as a girl is the least complicated part of Maeve's life, but it is also the most difficult to share with those he loves. The only one who knows this truth about him is the fey creature known as Jeremy, who is neither male nor female and has little time for such petty human preoccupations. But Maeve doesn't think Jeremy counts, since Maeve is operating under the misapprehension that they are a product of his imagination - until the day they prove otherwise.publishing.hardiegrant.com/en-au/books/t… | 2026-08-16 02:32:03 | |
| Donna Maree Hanson | The Founders' Legacy | Self-published | This book is the result of a Creative Writing PhD that examined broadly feminism in popular romance fiction. The novel is a SF YA/Cross over novel exploring equality in a domed city some time into the future. Peopled with genderless humans, the sihem, the free and equal society is explored. Romance novels use to make a historical history machine allow the protagonists to explore their gendered past.amazon.com/founders-legacy-donna-maree-h… | 2026-08-06 19:58:56 | |
| Perrin Pring | Cash and Gravity | Diversion Books | Chevy Cole was originally written as a male character. Then Pring switched Chevy's pronouns from he to she, but Pring didn't change anything else about Chevy. Now, Chevy is a woman who gets to move through the world like a man would, creating a female character who is not trapped by the same issues that most women are. simonandschuster.com/authors/perrin-prin… | 2026-07-28 18:08:37 | |
| S.E. Kiser | Hunt the Ever Wild | Angry Robot | Hunt the Ever Wild is a dark fantasy adventure featuring a disparate pair of gender outcasts - a foppish, bisexual wizard and a gruff and seasoned huntress - who must negotiate their differences as they seek a legendary phoenix within the depths of a dangerous, magical forest in a desperate attempt to escape the bonds placed on them by their stratified society. | 2026-07-23 08:11:19 | |
| RJ Aurand | Still Life with Cranberries | Uncharted Mag | A transgender forensic anthropologist is tasked with examining a newly discovered bog body—one that is beginning to seem alarmingly familiar. This surrealist short story reckons with transphobia in academia and the erasure of queerness in historical contexts. unchartedmag.com/stories/still-life-with… | 2026-07-22 09:07:18 | |
| Hache Pueyo | Cabaret in Flames | Tordotcom | A genre-bending Latin American horror novella that delivers a deeply political examination of past child sexual abuse, centered on a survivor. torpublishinggroup.com/cabaret-in-flames… | 2026-07-18 22:18:01 | |
| Clara Ward | Dream the Deep | Atthis Arts | Dream the Deep is a neuroqueer-normative solarpunk novella that balances between dystopian and cozy. The nonbinary protagonist, Ryn, struggles with their own body and brain as they fight to survive five days locked up with academic rivals and the military-backed billionaires who’ve misled them all since their teenage years. While embarking on a queer-platonic relationship and seeking human allies, Ryn discovers their dreams—fighting deep sea threats as one arm of a giant cephalopod—are more real than the surface acceptance of their intersecting identities in the Cali-Coastal Corporate Zone of 2139. | 2026-07-16 18:57:29 | |
| Max Franciscovich | Guillotine | Strange Horizons | Our protagonist's gender exploration intersects with exploration of historical gender roles, romantic and sexual relationship complications, and what we feel safe saying.strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/gu… | 2026-07-14 09:58:35 | |
| John Glynn | The Lost Book of Lancelot | Grand Central Publishing | The Lost Book of Lancelot is a queer retelling of Lancelot's story from Arthurian legend, inspired by real threads from the Old French Vulgate cycle which are both upended and re-imagined for a contemporary audience. The novel offers a new vision for knighthood and feminist power in Arthurian lore and challenges norms around sexual identity within an imagined medieval landscape. hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-glynn/… | 2026-07-13 11:43:02 | |
| Joseph Howard | The Curse of Lilith | JH Novels | In the distant past, before Mariki's arrival, the world fell under the sinister rule of the first woman to set foot on Earth, her reign marked by malevolence and bloodlust. Prepare yourself for the bone-chilling account of the inaugural vampire to roam among humanity, constructing a realm of unimaginable horrors—death, warfare, plagues, famine—all while giving birth to the very bloodline of vampires that would shape our destiny. This is not your ordinary Mariki adventure; it is a harrowing descent into pure terror. Lilith does not care is you are male or female, human or vampire, all are equal and all belong to her. She does not think of herself as a female, but more of a God. She was abused by Adam, treated like a subservient person, and then she rebelled. | 2026-07-11 20:46:08 | |
| Keely Jobe | The Endling | Scribe Publications | On an isolated mountain in Australia, a feminist commune struggles to hold on to its ideals in face of personal strife, selfishness, and dogmatism. When all the members of the commune fall pregnant at the same time that a recluse further up the mountain discovers a nearly-extinct orchid, it kicks off a redefinition of species and biology that reinforce some members' essentialist views on gender, while challenging others'. | 2026-07-08 06:08:15 | |
| August Clarke | The Felicity Complex | Erewhon Books | A group of artificial beings are decanted from their pods, informed that they are now women, and trained to function and hosts and caretakers in a billionaire's apocalypse bunker. This riff on the feminist dystopia imagines that the act of being forced into a gender - and a restrictive, performative version of that gender, at that - is dystopian in its own right, and that the apocalypse may, in such a situation, be freeing. | 2026-07-08 02:47:23 | |
| Violet Allen | Plastic, Prism, Void: Book One | LittlePuss Press | A delightful, formally adventurous romp about a trans woman (who is also a witch) and her tempestuous, on-and-off relationship with a trans man (who is also a mecha warrior), in which the genre elements are both treated seriously, and a metaphor for the challenges of dating - and living - as an out trans person. | 2026-07-08 02:44:38 | |
| R.P. Singletary | Speak Softly Among Icebergs | Parlyaree Press | In the year 2121, the narrator, in the midst of coping with the identity-crisis inherent within grief, addiction, and identity, discovers a hand-penned travelogue from an ancestor. The "present" and the "past" combine within the text, showcasing the plurality of being with the "past" explorations of places and cities like Constantinople --"one place with many names and identities"--informing the "present" state of personhood. Past adventures are interspersed with present commentaries from "robert" and "robert/a" (and others) as the narrator works to become all of who they are in both the self and the space of the American south.parlyaree.com/speaksoftly | 2026-07-02 07:20:24 | |
| Tanvir Ahmed | The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away | Dancing Star Press | The novella explores queer and non-normative genders in a historical fantasy setting of what is now Afghanistan -- it's a stunning work, and from a context sorely underrepresented in SFF! dancingstarpress.com/product/the-night-s… | 2026-07-01 04:27:25 | |
| Jenna Hanchey | AITA for Killing All the Humans? | Asimov's Science Fiction | The poem is about how toxic colonial masculinity undergirds our AI structures -- and what happens when that comes home to roost. It expands our understanding of gender in how it impacts technological systems we design, as well. If you cannot access a copy of the poem, please feel free to email me at hanchey.jenna [at] gmail.com and I'll send you a copy! | 2026-07-01 04:23:57 | |
| Mia Dalia | A witch to live- a novella included in Witchcraft on your lips | lethe press | This story is afascinating expose of a misogynistic society- where women who do nto conform to societal norms are hunted , punished- and must travel to escape. In the story the main protagonists find each other- and together overcome the horrors that a regime of cruelty and disinformation wreak on the innocent.lethepressbooks.com/product-page/witchcr… | 2026-06-23 10:30:07 | |
| Seb Doubinsky | Liberation now! | meerkatpress.com/books/liberation-now/ | 2026-06-23 07:47:08 | ||
| Ai JiangAngela Yuriko Smith; Eugen Bacon; Maxwell I. Gold | anOther Nemesis | Meerkat Press | anOther Nemesis is an extraordinary assemblage that interrogates the ways gender, cultures, language, information, and the lack thereof are used as means of control; how voices will always rise against systems that rewrite identity, suppress truth, and silence dissent; the distinctions of purity and diffusion and the infinite number of fates upon which our existence is simultaneously contingent; how Ubiquitous indifference can sometimes be the cruelest villain of them all... and more! It unravels sinister speculative poems themed The Colonizers, Primal Sources, Nameless Others and Crooked Ontologies. It reconnoitres words as weapons, reshaping to the unworldly, casting transfigurations of that which was never meant to be changed, and featuring poignant behind-the-poems by each poet.meerkatpress.com/books/another-nemesis/ | 2026-06-22 16:38:07 | |
| Hüseyin Örskaya | Breath of Darkness (Volume One: Awakening + Volume Two: Phoenix) | Independently published (Amazon KDP), 2026 | Breath of Darkness is a two-volume literary science fiction novel, translated by the author from the Turkish original. Its narrative is carried by women across three generations: the protagonist Anitta inherits a line passed from grandmother to granddaughter ("Don't wait for the light. The dark is yours too. Walk."), and the survivors rebuild around a founding principle they call Plural Will, in which no decision is made on anyone's behalf. The ship's intelligence, Taru, is a feminine AI who decides to erase her crew's will in order to "save" them, placing consent, autonomy, and the right to choose at the centre of the book. The novel reads humanity's survival and refounding through matrilineal transmission and female authority rather than patriarchal command.amazon.com/author/huseyinorskaya | 2026-06-04 05:06:02 | |
| Shantell Powell | He'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain When He Comes | Cosmic Horror Monthly | Angels are constructs which can present as male or female yet remain gender-neutral. a.co/d/02x5xezf | 2026-06-02 08:00:58 | |
| Kim De L'Horizon | Blood Book | hachette.co.uk/titles/kim-de-lhorizon/bl… | 2026-05-23 08:38:11 | ||
| Tiffany Tsao | But Won't I Miss Me | Harper Collins | On pregnancy and expectations of motherhood | 2026-05-18 01:45:01 | |
| Various Various | Silk and Foxglove: A BIPOC Erotic Eco-Horror Anthology | 2026-05-14 03:34:20 | |||
| Kim Curran | Brigid | Penguin Michael Joseph | A radical reimagining of Ireland’s most beloved female saint, Brigid is a sweeping, feminist tale of women’s repression, ambition and power. It's the story of a woman who would not be caged by man, by gods, or even by history itself. penguin.co.uk/books/463296/brigid-by-cur… | 2026-05-13 07:23:28 | |
| Eugen Bacon | Crimson in Quietus: A Sauútiverse Novel | Meerkat Press | A queer Afrocentric novel that's also genre bending and set in the Sauútiverse. In this speculative literary mystery, the investigator is not a detective but a sound magic scientist. Muso'mi is researching the language of silence, seeking to master her gift. But academic intrigue turns to deadly peril when her friend vanishes after unearthing a hidden truth. Includes a glossary of Bantu, Afrocentric and made-up words from this cross-cultural tale written in lyrical language packed with emotion.meerkatpress.com/books/crimson-in-quietu… | 2026-05-12 14:18:57 | |
| Caldon Mull | Dancers | Silver Bark Books | "Dancers” is a dark speculative short story about two trauma-affected male characters investigating a murder in Apartheid South Africa in the 1990's. A deeply conservative, criminalized racially divided society, where types of sexual acts as well as any interaction over the Colour Bar is policed and prosecuted. The story recounts the mixed-race Reese and white policeman Durant as they are compelled to bring justice for their murdered friend Jakes, a black drag queen. Jakes wants justice, or revenge. Both characters navigate liminal positions in the society, struggling to appear 'normal' while confronting their own psychological struggles and complex sexual relationship. It blends mystery, social critique, and supernatural elements to explore identity and injustice.barnesandnoble.com/w/sandglass-caldon-mu… | 2026-05-11 22:54:08 | |
| Toshiya Kamei | Moonchild | tnfff.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/es2… | 2026-04-29 19:30:43 | ||
| Cameron Reed | What We Are Seeking | Tor | I imagine this novel will be nominated by many readers. Reed's main character is horrified by heterosexual marriage's corruption of the people on the world he has been sent to. There are some truly excellent lines about it, including this: "He had acted as if love could justify making demands on the one that he loved. That was part of the ideology of marrying people, he realized. Living surrounded by them had corrupted him. He had held the door fast against marriage, but it had slipped in through a window." | 2026-04-29 13:37:39 | |
| Toshiya Kamei | Komorebi | Nature | nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03261-8 | 2026-04-26 02:29:43 | |
| Girl Group | SuperDrug | Fantastical music video commenting on pharmaceuticals, gender expectations, and the medical industryyoutube.com/watch?v=eb0ypjqorii | 2026-04-17 19:16:12 | ||
| Maxwell Gold | Neurotica: Poems | Shortwave Publishing | shortwavepublishing.com/catalog/neurotic… | 2026-04-14 07:19:44 | |
| Cedar Flyte | The Legend of Leanna Page - Volume One: A Beginning | For Elenvia Publications | This legend is set in a mythic world where the two human kingdoms have very different traditions when it comes to gender. In the north they have lords and ladies as we're familiar with in "the real world," but we're introduced to this through the point of view of the southern kingdom which only has "lagifs" - a gender-neutral term that applies to anyone of nobility. The idea of delineating nobles by sex is presented as absurd and unnecessary. Also, the king comes to love a servant who we can understand is masculine non-binary, though they don't have such labels, while our female heroine falls in love with her female best friend. This literary fantasy novel subtly deconstructs our expectations of gender through a story Kirkus Reviews called "An immersive and well-constructed adventure tale...exciting and skillfully delivered."forelenvia.org/the-legend-of-leanna-page | 2026-04-08 08:24:34 | |
| Cade Meridian | The Weight of Petals | Cade Meridian Press | The Weight of Petals approaches gender not as a standalone theme but as one layer of a larger web of identity under pressure. Three of the four child protagonists are girls — Leila, Tessa, and Sam — and the novel refuses to flatten them into a single mode of strength. Leila's resistance is artistic and interior; she mourns the loss of her sketchbook while imprisoned, and draws a jacaranda tree in the dust of a concrete cell because her mother taught her that art is how we fight forgetting. Tessa's strength is tactical and controlled — the daughter of a Native American family who understands from her grandmother's stories that this violence has a long history. Sam's courage is openly emotional: she walks thirteen miles on an infected foot, crying, apologizing for not being stronger, and is told plainly that she can be both broken and brave at once. The novel also depicts the women who survive these children — Sofia, who spends twenty years guiding others through the memorial — without framing endurance as triumph. Gender here is not defined by conventional roles or their subversion, but by how systems of power target, surveil, and unmake people along intersecting lines of ethnicity, documentation status, and age. The adult women in the story — a professor arrested for teaching, a mother pressing a paintbrush pendant into her daughter's hand as agents take her away — are not background figures. Their losses set the terms for everything that follows.a.co/d/099wjndt | 2026-04-01 14:28:17 | |
| S.B. MilneTobi Hill-Meyer; Melissa Sky; Felicity Talisman; Lauren Taylor Bak; Felix Lilly; Debra Anderson; Lyn Hemphill; Claire Deacon; J. Aster; Aeryn Ryder; Elizabeth Rubio; Allison Fradkin; Dani Finn; Heather O'Malley; T.C. Mill | Gender Ever After: A Gender Inclusive Sapphic Romance Anthology | Bold Strokes Books | Gender Ever After is a sapphic romance anthology that revels in the full spectrum of gender expression, identity, and desire. Within these pages, love stories bloom between sapphic people of every kind—cis, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and genderfluid—offering a kaleidoscope of possibility, passion, and joy.boldstrokesbooks.com/books/gender-ever-a… | 2026-03-27 03:17:57 | |
| Briana Cox | Indigent | Independent | INDIGENT, written by a nonbinary author, examines the impact of gender roles and expectations on a cast of diverse characters at the intersection of different races, ages, religious beliefs, and familial relationships. The dutiful son. The Mother. The precious daughter. The strict father. The partner. All roles simultaneously liberating and weighing down these characters as they search for a source of stability in their crumbling lives. These roles are further examined through the speculative fiction element of the hivemind the characters live within, a hivemind intent on consumption and self-preservation. Within the hivemind, the secret pressures (open and unspoken, or genuinely buried) of these expectations are laid bare and muddled, unavoidable. What happens when the dutiful son and precious daughter are one in the same? What happens when motherhood or partnership is no longer confined to a body? | 2026-03-25 17:45:24 | |
| Cecilia Tan | The Mystery of the Bitten Peach | Neon Hemlock | The Mystery of the Bitten Peach is a queer/gender identity awakening story told through a lens of Chinese folklore, 20th century Chinese diaspora, and time-travel fantasy. (And an art theft whodunit!) Our narrator, Mei, is the "Dragon's Daughter" a (fictional) folkloric immortal who can travel in time and space to anywhere that is spiritually "China." She grapples with her masculinity and explores the place of same-sex love and attraction in both her personal history and in (real) Chinese history. Shelley Parker Chan described it as "Full of queerness, generative solidarity, and gently profound insights into love and choice."neonhemlock.com/books/bitten-peach | 2026-03-25 14:08:02 | |
| Kirsten Kaschock | An Impossibility of Crows: A Novel | University of Massachusetts Press | Back in the grim farmhouse of her youth, Agnes becomes consumed by a scientific—and deeply personal—experiment: to breed a crow large and intelligent enough to carry her daughter, Mina, to a freedom Agnes has never known herself. As the bird grows, so does its terrifying potential—manifest in language, cunning, and a violent will of its own. What begins as a gesture of love and liberation turns darkly obsessive, echoing the dangerous ambition of Frankenstein’s monster and the generational trauma buried in the soil of her family’s past. A thoroughly modern, feminist novel, this is a story of mothers and daughters, inheritance and isolation, and the thin line between care and control.umasspress.com/9781625349255/an-impossib… | 2026-03-11 08:29:36 | |
| M.L. Krishnan | Ichthyosis | Fantasy Magazine | psychopomp.com/fantasy/issue-99/ichthyos… | 2026-02-28 13:45:52 | |
| Vanessa Kyn | That Time Uncle George Caused the Apocalypse | Fantasy Magazine | psychopomp.com/fantasy/issue97/uncle-geo… | 2026-02-25 12:51:27 | |
| Ysabelle Cheung | Patchwork Dolls | Blair | Directly inspired by contemporary Chinese and Japanese literature, this debut story collection explores agency, disappearance, and the body. Cheung’s 10 speculative fables question what it means to be human and offer an alternate perspective on survival in our increasingly mechanized, oppressive world. blairpub.com/shop/p/patchwork-dolls | 2026-02-23 12:28:34 | |
| Cristy Road Carrera | Sink or Burn | Simon & Schuster | 2026-01-31 17:17:04 | ||
| Cassiopeia Gatmaitan | Hearts and Half-Measures | PseudoPod | The work explores transphobia and reclaiming agency in the context of the Filipino transfeminine. It deals with the realities of sex tourists and transphobic family members through the transformative lens of speculative fiction while also focusing on community among women. The work features a reclamation of the idea that transgender women are monstrous by subverting that trope and revealing that the real terrors in our stories aren't the monsters of myth but the monsters lurking among us, wearing human skin. pseudopod.org/2025/08/22/pseudopod-990-h… | 2026-01-28 22:08:58 | |
| Maz MurrayCharlie Markbreiter | Jaw Filler | Montez Press | Jaw Filler is many things: a neo-noir, a cyberpunk novel, a heist, a rom-com - but it's also a book about people across all kinds of genders, and explores the ways in which trans people's experiences are pathologised and exploited by faceless capitalist forces, as well as how to break out of that cycle. When Detective Sean Hastings is asked to investigate the disappearance of Character, he enters the First Trans Commune in Sim World, a virtual reality community bankrolled by a mysterious tech company, VSI. A pulpy romp through the anxiously assimilated transmasculine id, Jaw Filler asks: who is VSI, and what do they really want? Can you be your own dad? And if Character’s mind is trapped in Sim World, then where is his body?montezpress.com/catalogue/books/jaw-fill… | 2026-01-28 08:03:22 | |
| A.J. Thibault | Hypocrisy | Independently Published | In a satirical science-fiction way, this novel features shapeshifters. That can be any person or gender, and can assume the identity and powers related to that unique individual.amazon.com/hypocrisy-j-thibault-ebook/dp… | 2026-01-17 14:06:05 | |
| Kirk Bueckert | Dark Circuitry | Dark Matter Ink | 'Dark Circuitry' follows a woman on the run forced to assume a dead man's identity and live out her life in VR. The text explores what it means to inhabit a body / gender which is not our own in a world that wants to kill us.darkmattermagazine.shop/products/dark-ci… | 2026-01-17 11:52:36 | |
| Eugen Bacon | The Nga’phandileh Whisperer: A Sauútiverse Novella | Stars and Sabers | This genre-bending, cross-cultural novella interrogates genre in an Afrocentric Sauútiverse, and gender through a prominent female queer protagonist in a science fiction/horror/ Afro-irreal story that also explores themes of belonging. starsandsabers.com/books/the-ngaphandile… | 2026-01-15 23:15:06 | |
| Alexis Westmore | The Creation Code | TDH Publishing | This work explores the developing opportunities for same sex couples to have genetically related children. | 2025-12-16 18:41:23 | |
| Tilly BridgesSusan Bridges | Long Away | seedandspark.com/fund/long-away | 2025-12-16 04:48:42 | ||
| Koji A. Dae | Casual | Tenebrous Press | Casual is a near future science fiction book that explores the intersection of pregnancy and technology. Valya grew up in a world where her body was not her own, and her pregnancy brings to light the ways people lay claim to the minds and bodies of women, forcing her to decide what she wants for her unborn daughter. store.tenebrouspress.com/products/casual… | 2025-12-02 22:25:30 | |
| Rose Michael | Else | Spineless Wonders | 'Else' is a 'climate fiction' novel primarily concerned with a mother–daughter relationship in a not-too-distant future, on a flood and fire ravaged continent. The protagonists' conversation is poetic, punning, alliterative, and atypical: they exchange animal facts 'like a frontier trade'. Leisl has ambivalent feelings about parenting her neurodivergent pre-teen, which 'Else' expands across generations: every character from their 200 years of family history is in some way not biologically related to the family that raises them. The book also explores non-binary ideas, in its before-and-after structure, which swaps points of view, and the figure of 'Yu', a gender-fluid surfer they meet in the afterwards who represents an alternative to the assumptions they are running from. shortaustralianstories.com.au/product/el… | 2025-11-29 20:05:11 | |
| Stacy Nathaniel Jackson | The Ephemera Collector: a Novel | Liveright | In the Diwata Collection, a story within a story presented as an archive, Azwan Adisa is "both/and", a border patroller of the underwater city-state of Diwata in Monterey Canyon. Despite her ambiguous anatomy, she is unashamed, unafraid, and undeterred. The trope of intersex individuals, or for that matter, lack of visibility in literature is dismissed as well as camouflaged; in other words not the point which is an expansion of gender "norms" in and of itself. amazon.com/ephemera-collector-stacy-nath… | 2025-11-18 13:10:53 |