I will admit I’ve tended to roll my eyes at the annual “Trans Rights Readathon” campaign that floods my social media streams every March. It’s exactly the sort of well-intentioned but reductive activism that feels misplaced and performative in the wake of what has been a truly horrific year for trans people. It also doesn’t help that the typical onslaught of infographics and listicles often include many of the same few books repeated ad nauseam or are peppered with texts authored by cis people. And then, inevitably, the “Trans Rights Readathon” fervor disappears completely come April 1.
Books by trans writers should be a year-round feature of your TBR stacks and StoryGraph updates. Not only is reading our stories an essential part of the long fight towards equality and justice for the community, but also because trans people regularly publish some of the flat out best books of any genre. In less than six months, 2025 has already amassed an absolutely stellar line-up of trans novels that range from historical fiction, lyrical explorations of dysphoria and identity, and science fiction set in a futuristic, robot obsessed Korea. They’re outstanding reads that you absolutely get lost in this Pride Month, just make sure that you keep reading when June is over.
Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom
Zee Carlstrom’s anarchic literary thriller may have one of the best titles of any book published this year. It follows a nameless nonbinary corporate burnout as they drag their “garbage goth” (their words not mine) roommate on a cross-country roadtrip to look into the disappearance of their far-right conspiracy theorist father. Make Sure You Die Screaming is an acerbic novel written about an aimless and traumatized person who is intent on burning themselves and everyone around them to cinders. Carlstrom crafts a narrator whose voice is caustically hilarious and biting in their frustration and anger at the absurd injustices of contemporary American capitalism. It would be easy for Make Sure You Die Screaming to come off as nothing more than a drug-fueled bender of queer cynicism, but Carlstrom writes their characters with nuance and empathy. It dares us to truly look at the human heart of the darkest, most destructive parts of America and ourselves without letting either off the hook.
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
After the tepid launch of her poetry collection and a humiliatingly disastrous New Years Eve, Max, an early thirties trans woman and London resident, decides it’s time she get back on the dating scene. Unexpectedly, she quickly falls for Vincent, an affluent cis man who is still very much tied to his bougie friends and traditional Chinese parents. As their relationship grows more serious and the differences between her social circle of queer artists and Vincent’s wealthy, corporate life grow more apparent, Max must decide if she is in love with a man or her proximity to heteronormativity. And this is before Vincent’s complicated past is revealed. Nicola Dinan has written one of the sharpest and most emotionally vulnerable novels on the complicated dynamic of dating cisgender straight men as a trans woman. Disappoint Me does not shy away from the ugly and violent shadow cast by patriarchal gender norms and fragile masculinity but avoids spiraling into romantic doomerism or simplistic portrayals of trans panic. Dinan’s characters are too complex and genuine to live in that sort of story.
When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris
While including When the Harvest Comes on this list might be considered a minor spoiler to some readers, any list of this year’s defining trans novels would be incomplete without mentioning Denne Michele Norris’s gorgeously written and emotionally resonant debut. Davis, a renowned violist, is ecstatic to marry his long-time partner Everett, the eldest son of an affluent New England family, but is torn on whether to wear a jumpsuit or a gown to his wedding. For Davis, it’s hard to separate his feelings on femininity and womanhood from his relationship with his strict and abusive father, Doctor Reverend John Freeman or just “The Reverend.” When a terrible accident on his wedding night brings his past and present lives together, Davis is forced to reckon with his own trauma surrounding his father, gender, and sexuality. Despite the heavy subject matter, When the Harvest Comes feels most defined by the genuine tenderness that Norris extends to her principal characters, who are first and foremost loyal and loving people invested in healing fraught relationships. While most readers can likely put the pieces together rather quickly, the trans themes of Norris’s plot are quiet, but undeniably present, for most of its length, but their inevitable and revelatory foregrounding in the novel’s final act. When the Harvest Comes is a rewarding, comforting read that earns its catharsis.
Luminous by Silvia Park
In one of my favorite scenes of 2025 so far, a trans man and a robot his sister designed to look like a famous K-Pop star/actor meet at a local dive bar to discuss the ins and outs of Korean masculinity. Their conversation is vulnerable, unexpectedly sexy, and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Luminous by Silvia Park is filled with many of these moments as it mines the complicated family dynamics of two siblings who spent the formative years of their childhood living with boundary pushing robot as a brother. Park’s luminous debut novel, like all great robot fiction, is ultimately about recognizing humanity. While Luminous may have a lot on its mind other than gender, it is still undeniably a trans novel, particularly in how it probes questions of identity, dysphoria, and dysmorphia through the lens of cybernetics and sibling dynamics shaped by transition, trauma, and age.
Woodworking by Emily St. James
Alternating between “Coming-of-Age” and “Coming-Out” stories, Woodworking’s dual protagonist premise that follows a teenage trans girl and her trans but still closeted English teacher is only part of what makes Emily St. James’s novel so heartfelt and winning. Set in a small South Dakota town in the months leading into the 2016 presidential election, St. James paints a portrait of queer rural America that is fraught with political and cultural judgement and still capable of surprising joy and community. On paper, Woodworking might as well be a classic crowd-pleaser, complete with playful domestic humor and emotional reunions and confrontations (it’s even got the gifted teen and emotional teacher dynamic), but it avoids the trappings of most book club releases through its well-written and dynamic cast of characters and some inventive POV choices that ask the reader to continually reframe their understanding of each character’s sense of self and identity. In a better world, Woodworking, with its low barrier to entry and well-paced and rewarding narrative, would be one of the bestselling and most widely discussed books of the year. I guess we still have six months to make that happen.
A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton
Jeanne Thornton’s novel Summer Fun is one of the best and most enigmatic trans femme novels ever written — and one of my favorite books of the decade so far. Unsurprisingly, her follow up, A/S/L, is similarly unique in its premise, style, and presentation (the hardcover by Soho Press is a work of art in and of itself) and also just really damn good. A/S/L charts the live of three trans women from their teenage years spent creating adventure games in a niche web forum to their early thirties as their lives unintentionally intersect and intertwine in Brooklyn, New York in the fall of 2016. (Yes, another 2016 election trans novel. It’s the big trend this year. I wonder why?) Thornton’s prose is always lyrical and stunning, and A/S/L demonstrates time and time again how deft she is at upending and changing form to match characters and themes of the moment. Multiple chapters even take on the form of late-90s chat room logs that feel ripped out of some kind of queer Internet time capsule. On a craft level alone, A/S/L is a masterwork, but it resonates so deeply because of its insights into the refuge online spaces and escapism offered to closeted trans people and just how gaping a void their absence creates.
The Lilac People by Milo Todd
One of the countless tragedies brought about by the Nazi regime is that it has taken almost a hundred years for Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science to re-enter the public eye. Hirschfeld’s groundbreaking research into the nuances of gender and sexuality not only pioneered much of today’s study and medicine but helped transform Weimar Berlin into an early sanctuary for trans people. Milo Todd’s meticulously researched and lovingly realized The Lilac People is a necessary work of historical fiction that not only spotlights Hirschfeld’s work and the society he helped influence, but also the Institute’s tragic destruction and its aftermath, damning not only the cruelty of Nazi Germany but the capricious and conservative policies of the supposedly liberating Allied Forces. The Lilac People not only asks that we look to a still suppressed era of queer history but also serves as a stark reminder that while progress is never guaranteed, queer survival through community is an eternal necessity.
