Books Featuring Trans Stories and Themes for Trans Day of Visibility

the space between men
By Mia S. Willis
Penguin Poets, Penguin Random House

Mia S. Willis is a phenomenal poet who led a Friday Night Salon with Girls Write Now all about their new book, the space between men. These piercing, surprising poems look to familial history, rituals of faith, and the natural world to explore how the intersecting cultures of Blackness and queerness relate to each other.

The Year of Blue Water
By Yanyi
Yale University Press

How can a search for self‑knowledge reveal art as a site of community? Yanyi’s arresting and straightforward poems weave experiences of immigration as a Chinese American, of racism, of mental wellness, and of gender from a queer and trans perspective.

Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic
By g. haron davis
HarperCollins

Transness is as varied and colorful as magic can be. In Transmogrify!, you’ll embark on fourteen different adventures alongside unforgettable characters who embody many different genders and expressions and experiences—because magic is for everyone, and that is cause for celebration.

Girls Write Now On the Art of the Craft: A Guidebook to Collaborative Storytelling
HarperOne, HarperCollins

This hands-on guide—conceived of and written and edited by the young people of Girls Write Now—draws from the organization’s dynamic curriculum and the writers’ own personal experiences spanning decades. It offers aspiring writers the tools they need to develop their craft—including tips, insight, and advice on the writing and publishing process as well as critical thinking about the future of storytelling.
This anthology features stories by women and gender expansive writers, including “A Foreshadowed Understanding” about one mentee’s evolving knowledge of their trans identity.

Salt the Water
by Candice Iloh
Dutton Books for Young Readers,
Penguin Random House

Cerulean Gene is free everywhere except school, where they’re known for repeatedly challenging authority. Raised in a free-spirited home by two loving parents who encourage Cerulean to be their full self, they’ve got big dreams of moving cross-country to live off the grid with their friends after graduation. But a fight with a teacher spirals out of control, and Cerulean impulsively drops out to avoid the punishment they fear is coming. Why wait for graduation to leave an oppressive capitalist system and live their dreams?

Man o’ War
by Cory McCarthy
Dutton Books for Young Readers,
Penguin Random House

A Stonewall Honor Book

An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans teen fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town.

Redefining Realness
by Janet Mock
Simon & Schuster

In her profound and courageous New York Times bestseller, Girls Write Now Honoree Janet Mock establishes herself as a resounding and inspirational voice for the transgender community—and anyone fighting to define themselves on their own terms.

With unflinching honesty and moving prose, Janet Mock relays her experiences of growing up young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America, offering readers accessible language while imparting vital insight about the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of a marginalized and misunderstood population.

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir
by Shayla Lawson
Tiny Reparations, Penguin Random House

Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability.

A Gentleman’s Gentleman
by TJ Alexander
Vintage, Penguin Random House

The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a “man of unusual make” and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station. Enter James Harding, Christopher’s new, distractingly handsome—if rigidly traditional—valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher’s impending nuptials—and the secrets both men are keeping. With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced portrait of trans identity, A Gentleman’s Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.

The Heartbreak Bakery
By A. R. Capetta
Candlewick, Penguin Random House

A Lambda Literary Award Winner

Teenage baker Syd sends ripples of heartbreak through Austin’s queer community when a batch of post-being-dumped brownies turns out to be magical—and makes everyone who eats them break up.