Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for September 2026

There are all kinds of books coming out in September, but there are especially a lot of new queer and trans poetry collections coming out, so why don’t you set a specific reading goal for the month to READ GAY POEMS!!!

Maia has a special power: As one of the chosen few who are born shapeshifters, she can transform part-animal shape. She’s also starting middle school, which comes with its own problems, magical and not. The book comes from past Autostraddle contributor Kai Cheng Thom!

We’ve got a lot of new K-Ming Chang coming out this fall (I’m personally most excited for Needlemouth, out in October), starting with this sapphic YA romance novel about teenage journalist Wendy Lin and her high-achieving nemesis Helen Ouyang, her former childhood bestie and maybe crush.

The early praise for this novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its ripple effects within a community has been HUGE, and the book was longlisted for the Booker Prize already.

I’m a huge fan of Emerson Whitney’s previous book Daddy Boy (in fact, I think it’s one of the best nonfiction books of the past decade). This latest memoir follows Emerson’s return to the rural Maine island of their childhood to reconnected with their complicated mother.

Total weirdo Barbara Truelove (Of Monsters and Mainframes) is back at it with a “ghoulish and gleeful tribute to the unstoppable power of female rage” of a murder victim who possesses the body of her grandmother’s antique doll to seek revenge on her killer, teaming up with a fellow human who’s also got a grudge against Kyle and is ready to expose his crimes to the Kyle-adoring residents of their small, idyllic town.

A riff on the cursed film horror trope, this novel is about Val McQueen, who on one day in 1994 saw an obscure film at the local movie theater with her little sister and best friend. The little sister and best friend then disappeared. When a stranger’s murder brings her past back to the surface, she teams up with a cinephile and a former classmate to find the film.

Caya cons her way into an elite coven after the witches ruin her privileged and protected life as a member of the royal family. A love triangle emerges. between Caya, a prince, and he estranged childhood friend.

The three-time WNBA champion and openly gay athlete details the adversity she overcame to become the star she is today — her family’s housing insecurity growing up, battling her way onto the boy’s basketball team when her school lacked a girl’s team (and becoming the best player on it), telling an “unusually empowering tale of a strong girl becoming a stronger woman.”

New! Emily! St.! John! Mandel!!!!!!! Let’s go, Station Eleven heads! Her latest is set in Los Angeles 2031, after the fall of the United States. Ari Waker are going to a party in Silverlake, when the party is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a doppelganger and the disappearance of the host.

Spruill, the former EIC of Swish Appeal, began reporting on the WNBA in 2014, hoping to elevate the then oft-neglected league. In The W, she promises to deliver a “raucous roller-coaster history” of our favorite super-gay sporting organization from its lean early years to its current boom, just in time for what’s sure to be a thrilling postseason.

This is a re-release/new edition coming out to celebrate a decade of this sweet and tender graphic novel.

This one’s for the dark academia girlies. Ava’s scholarship for the private fine arts school of her dreams is slipping out of reach when her advisor says he’ll pass her if she does him a favor —befriend and guide a troubled student and snatch a copy of her secret novel. But then Ava falls for the student and uncovers the shocking truth behind that coveted manuscript.

A “swashbuckling” enemies-to-lovers tale that sees a mermaid and a pirate reluctantly teaming up to track down and settle their individual scores with a storied Sea Witch, finding sparks flying between them as they battle for survival on the high seas.

Four teenagers with unique supernatural gifts, determined to use their powers for good, uncover terrifying secrets when their free paranormal investigative services are enlisted to find a missing young woman connected to an old, possibly haunted, Victorian mansion.

There are so many ways to explore your gender identity, so here’s a new one: a bloodthirsty evil spirit falls for the boy who just moved into the house she haunts, accidentally possesses the body of his terrible boyfriend, and finds herself more comfortable in the boyfriend’s body than she ever did in her own.

This manga-style romance centers on a high school anime club and a group of friends whose assorted feelings for each other threaten their special bond.

We’ve been raving about biracial queer girl detective Goldie Vance since 2017. This new supersized paperback trade collection (illustrated by former Autostraddle Saturday Morning Cartoonist Brittany Williams and released by local favorite KaBOOM!) aims to introduce a new generation of readers to the intrepid teen detective who lives with her father at a Florida resort and dreams of becoming the hotel’s in-house investigator.

Among the many contributors to this anthology on early parenthood are some queer and trans authors, including Krys Malcolm Belc, whose most recent book we just reviewed.

An illustrated, misinformation-free, anti-capitalist and trauma-informed guide through all aspects of physical and social transition in the U.S.

We’ve got lots of new queer poetry coming out this month. Staying Still explores queer boyhood, the lives of children of refugees, generational loneliness, desire, and longing.

Five trans and nonbinary poets come together for this intimate collection.

Gina Gwenffrewi combines personal narrative of her life as a trans woman in Edinburgh with political and pop culture analysis that tracks the rise of J.K. Rowling as the world’s biggest loser (my words, not the author’s).

Pippa’s a hard-working witch sick of losing clients to the cheap DIY-magic shop across town, so she eagerly accepts a gig from her best friend to inspect his new B&B for ghosts — only to find that his co-owner, Elle Thompson, is very hot, has a lot of secrets, and wants the B&B’s ghosts

It’s never to early to start thinking about Christmas, so. This cozy rom-com from Food Network competitor Stef Ferrari flips the classic Hallmark holiday script — this time, a girl leaves her small-town Christmas tree farm to find the city girl who swept her off her feet.

This is the first installment in a new fantasy series about magic, warring kingdoms, and female rage.

A once-obsessively entangled group of childhood friends reunite after twenty years to play a mysterious RPG version of the childhood game that initially drove them apart after they accidentally opened a rift into a dangerous alternative dimension.

A juicy psychological thriller about an unhinged home organizer obsessed with her beautiful, wealthy new client — who is described as having magnetic energy, sporting neon signs, and selling iconic hair bows?? So…..

Single and adrift Iris meets Hazel, who lives in a women’s commune called Breach House, ruled by the community’s matriarchy Blythe. But things go awry in the community, leading to violence.

Betty Lou Dearden and the Ogden Quilters Association welcome two gay men into the group ahead of a massive quilting competition where they hope to beat their quilting rivals. Quilting thrills!

Here is the story of paranormal investigator and cryptozoologist Reggie and her adopted child…who is a chupacabra.

Teenage girl Eva steals her dead brother’s ashes with the intent to spread them everywhere at the Los Angeles County Fair, enlisting his friend group for a wild adventure through grief. She also harbors a crush on Clare, Javi’s best friend.

From the founder of a gay hockey club probes the topics of gender, masculinity, and sexuality as they pertain to hockey, going far beyond the scope of Heated Rivalry.

Dark academia in a queer-normative world, centered on five magical medical students placed together for their final group exam — they will pass together or fail together, even after finding their classmate’s dead body in the exam hall.

Promising to hold up a “dark, queer mirror” to the Great Gatsby, Kiste’s sort focuses on Mel, who knows her mother, Daisy Buchanan, had been truly gone for years before her body was found in a West Egg mansion in 1955. But when Mel enters the estate she’s surprised to find Daisy’s ghost, frozen at 23, and a phantom Jay Gatsby. It’s up to Mel to free her mother from a house choking on unfulfilled love.

This genre-blurring work is inspired by the sculptor Eva Hesse. It’s strange and conceptual, comprising “speculative art essays and textures.”

This novel puts a sapphic gothic horror twist on the tale of Bluebeard.

And here we have a queer and trans spin on Hamlet.

Two queer women in turn-of-the-century New York try to solve a mysterious hospital death.

This is the first installment in a historical fantasy duology about Ancient Rome’s famed poisoner Locusta, injecting her tale with a sapphic love story.

Set in India and centering a love affair between two men, Half Light is a complex and tender queer love story.

An “ode to bisexual desire, identity, and how far a person will go to avoid feeling lonely,” Plunkett’s novel is set in a small Vermont town, 2005, where an aimless 21-year-old gets a job at a horse stable, gets obsessed with her manager’s older, elusive ex, and pursues said ex all the way to her newly-opened coffee shop, where their exhilarating intimacy takes many forms, including tragic and all-consuming.

These stories on relationships sprawl from Manhattan to piazzas in Italy to coastal Maine to London.

This novel imagines an alternate future where the Cold War is still happening and centers the lives of four teen criminals on a mysterious mission.

Lonely girl Alex casts a spell from her grandmother’s spellbook to conjure a friend, even though she doesn’t believe in all that stuff. But then Tess comes into her life the very next day.

This work looks at how politicians and the government have manufactured a culture war that targets trans and nonbinary people and makes them the scapegoat for various societal ills.

Here we have a look at Two-Spirit and LGBTTQ* contributions to and interventions in museums.

These poems together paint a “portrait of a woman raised on violence, God, and American television.”

New translated, this work contains three projects: a novella in fragments about exploring Tsvetaeva’s romance with the Russian actress Sonia Holliday; a collection of love poems addressed to Russian poet Sophia Parnok; and Tsvetaeva’s response to Natalie Barney’s early 20th century essay collection Pensées d’une Amazone.

More queer poetry for you to sink your teeth into this September!

Bisexual woman Lucy’s life splits into two possible timelines after her boyfriend proposes to her on a jumbotron: one in which she says yes and one in which she says no.

A metaphysical mystery set in a literally underground lesbian bar, starring a bartender who can see ghosts and secrets. She’s finally found the queer community she craves, but as she grows increasingly entangled, its complicated dangers reveal themselves.

This queer love story follows two young men in Palestine. Isaac and Gabriel and brought together by a fifty-day wind that rustles up squalling sandstorms.

Queer, trans, and neurodivergent characters are injected into Twelfth Night in this riff on the Shakespearean rom-com.

Bronte Cade’s mother vanishes, and Bronte takes her place at a retreat for magical poets despite not having access to magic herself.

A queer and trans boy must fight for his boyfriend’s life in a Hunger Games-like dystopian death tournament.

Slasher gays who loved Camp Miasma might have fun with this tale of the teen daughter of a famous serial killer who has to prove she isn’t responsible for the latest spate of copy-cat murders.

Bisexual poet Kathy Fagan reckons with the limits of her life and of the planet in a searing, intimate collection of poems.

These poems promise to be equal parts “sad, sexy, and searching.”

How lucky are we to be getting all this new queer poetry this month!!! This one meditates on the beauties of everyday life.

Disability is at the center of these poems, which lyrically explore “anti-colonial, anti-capitalist psychiatric survivor- and patient-led movements, from Germany to Japan.”

These poems explore trans masculinity, the queer South, platonic love, and spiritual writing.

And this debut collection “reimagines the lyric poem through personality quizzes, crossword puzzles, fashion magazines, language lessons, and slumber parties.”

The author of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care and its ensuing sequels, Blake centers her latest on a filmmaker determined to finish the documentary her late parents never made. This is how she meets Margot Bishop, a descendent of the woman their North Carolina community has been calling the “Rose Witch” since 1901 — and the heir to the family’s occult-themed amusement park. Furthermore, Margot’s not on board with the film!

A writer struggling with the manuscript her terrible boss keeps trashing falls for the hot ghost mom haunting her famously spooky Dakota Building in Manhattan.

Nola James has to fight to save Lumi, the love of her life and a faery changeling.

Honey is a soccer superstar turned dancer who becomes tango partners with the Australian dance coach at the arts camp across the lake from where Honey is coaching soccer for the summer at an elite sports camp.

As always, this list is non-exhaustive! Feel free to shoutout anything else in the comments if you think we should know about it!