5 Books for the 5 Prompts of the 2025 Trans Rights Readathon

After a devastating war, trans woman Alice is the last human alive. That war threatens to reignite when Alice finds an AI personality in an ancient data core that controls a dormant weapons system, and convincing it that the war is over isn’t going well. Alice travels across the known universe searching for answers and aid, knowing that if the AI falls into the wrong hands, this could destroy the tenuous peace that was so hard-earned. This is a trans, sci-fi reinvention of Alice in Wonderland! It’s also a novella, making it a perfect readathon pick.

This is a gorgeous contemporary love story about fandoms, archives, storytelling, academia, and queer and trans culture — with one magical twist: the main character is a vampire. Sol has been lying low and staying alive by living in his basement office, but when he meets the widow of a famous lesbian TV writer, he slowly begins to venture out into the world again. There’s so much going on in this novel; it’s a unique perspective on vampires and what it means to be alive, dead, in between. —Laura Sackton

This beautiful, genre-defying book is part memoir of a mixed-race nonbinary scientist and part science writing about marine biology. By braiding these two threads together, though, it’s more than the sum of its parts. It explores queer people as shapeshifters, as swarms, as immortal. I savored these essays and never wanted the collection to end. Even if you aren’t usually a reader of science writing—I usually am not—I highly recommend picking this one up.

This unique, genre-blending science fantasy novel has several main characters, including 79-year-old Shizuka, a violin teacher who sold her soul for musical talent. If she can find seven souls to take her place, she’s freed from the contract, and she only has one more to go — and one year to do so. Her new student is the perfect candidate: Katrina, a teen trans girl who is a violin prodigy. Oh, and then there’s Lan, an alien running a donut shop, who Shizuka slowly starts to fall for. This is a beautiful book that also has some harrowing moments of trauma and transphobia. I’ve truly read nothing like it.

The title of jaye simpson’s debut collection sets the tone for the poems inside. It’s about so many things, from queerness to Indigeneity and beyond. Some of the poems are long, sprawling across multiple pages, and consisting of multiple segments. Others are short and swift, lasting just a few lines…but the ideas stay on your tongue for hours or days. It’s a hard collection to sum up in a short space, but perhaps that says something in and of itself. —Anne Mai Yee Jansen