Most books listed here have a trans author, center on the trans experience, or both. A few focus on the LGBTQ+ community. I have read every book on this list and can suggest books that specific audiences may find helpful.
Titles are listed in alphabetical order. The books most important to me are starred. 
When exploring a trans character the authors, in this list, often delve deeply into the trans experience. (That should be considered a trigger warning). However, while a trans author brings authenticity to the trans character, it is only the fictionalized experience of that character. All lived trans experiences are valid.
- Birthday – Meredith Russo
- Disappoint Me – Nicola Dinan
- If I Was Your Girl – Meredith Russo
- Mad Honey – Jodi Picoult (cis) and Jennifer Finney Boylan (trans)
- Melissa – Alex Gino (audience youth)
- Nevada – Imogen Binnie
- A Safe Girl to Love – Casey Plett
- Stag Dance – Torrey Peters
- Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters
- Woodworking – Emily St. James
(Hmm, I need to read more novels with trans masculine protagonists.)
Where to start
Nevada is considered an essential read as it was one of the first published books in the modern era authored by a trans person and featuring a trans main character. Imogen Bennie has said that in the protagonist, Maria, there is some guidance for trans people she had wished she had received when she was Maria’s age, though it may be considered through a “well, that didn’t work” lens, as Bennie mentions in the Nevada afterword, 2022 publication).
Woodworking and Mad Honey have held my attention the most and I have read them multiple times. And, my mind keeps returning to Stag Dance when I think about gender and sexuality in my own relationships.
That said, every book here I think is worth the reading time.
Also refer to The Trans Feminine Review for more books from a trans fem perspective.
Based on my own experience, most transgender-oriented publications have been either more academic oriented (e.g., Whipping Girl, Before We Were Trans) or memoir (e.g., She’s Not There). This list also represents that. While I think both perspectives are very important, I am now looking towards more fiction written by trans authors. Being trans is not the only state of being.
- All Boys Aren’t Blue – George M. Johnson (cis memoir gender bending)
- Am I Trans Enough? – Alo Johnston
- As a Woman – Paula Stone Williams (trans memoir)
- At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick the Pieces – Mary Collins (cis) and Donald Collins (trans memoir and part processing the past)
- Becoming Nicole – Amy Ellis Nutt (cis author biography of trans girl)
- Before We Were Trans – Kit Heyam, Ph.D (long long history of trans people)
- This Book is Gay – Juno Dawson
- Cleavage – Jennifer Finney Boylan (trans memoir)
- Genderqueer – Maia Kobabe (trans graphic novel memoir)
- Head Over Heels, Wives Who Stay with Cross-Dressers and Transsexuals – Virginia Erhardt, PhD (cis, avoid completely)
- I Heard Her Call My Name – Lucy Sante (trans memoir)
- I’m Afraid of Men – Vivek Shraya
- Pageboy – Elliot Page (trans memoir)
- Paper Doll – Dylan Mulvaney (trans memoir)
- The New Girl – Rhyannon Styles (trans memoir)
- Secret City – James Kirchick (cis author history of lavender scare)
- A Short History of Trans Misogyny – Jules Gill-Peterson
- She’s My Dad – Jonathan S. Williams (cis author memoir of trans parent)
- She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders – Jennifer Finney Boylan (trans memoir)
- Stuck in the Middle with You – Jennifer Finney Boylan (trans memoir)
- Tomorrow Will Be Different – Sarah McBride (trans memoir)
- Transforming – Austen Hartke
- Transgender History (3rd edition) – Susan Stryker
- What is the T? – Juno Dawson
- Why The Church of the Nazerene Should Be Fully LBGTQ+ Affirming – Thomas Jay Oord and Alexa Oord (both cis and is tailored to a cis audience who is uncomfortable with the queer experience)
- Whipping Girl – Julia Serano
Am I Trans Enough? – Genderqueer – Transforming / Transgender History – memoirs – Whipping Girl
Genderqueer is one of the most banned books in the United States. It’s a graphic novel that allowed me the question gender itself, even before I read any academic tome.
Am I Trans Enough? is a more gentle but important discussion. Alo Johnston is a younger (at time of publishing) trans man with great insight into the many ways of being trans and some of the paths we may take for ourselves, families, communities, and society at large.
Be sure to read Transgender History for a United States focused introduction to important events in our collective history. I often discuss the Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco when talking with skeptics, especially those in authority. As a result of that riot, the SF police hired a liaison to the community and made concrete and positive changes within the city. The trans community was seen.
Whipping Girl should be considered a more academic text that is focused on the transgender experience within the umbrella of gender studies. Julia Serano’s presentation, I think, is very accessible, but still … be ready for a college level class. Within that context, this is a foundational text and a must-read for diving into transgender history within a societal context.
A Short History of Trans Misogyny is another more academic text. Jules Gill-Peterson dissects the dueling perspectives, within trans feminine identities, of being too feminine to be accepted within the (cis) masculine community and too masculine to be accepted within the (cis) feminine community.
Transforming – Becoming Nicole – Pageboy – She’s Not There – Transgender History
Transforming, by Austen Hartke, is a great read especially for the intersection of society, culture, and christianity. Austen is a seminarian with a great insight into the cross-section of transgender christians (gasp!). My cis family members who read this book came to understand my transgender experience in a deeper and more compassionate way. For cis folks in within the religious community, a follow-on might be the memoir As a Woman. Paula Stone Williams has holds a doctorate in ministry and formally lead the Orchard Group, a christian church planting organization.
Becoming Nicole is authored by a cis journalist who follows a Maine, United States, family with a daughter that both has presented as a girl from a very young age and is an identical twin. Her life experiences lead to a case against the State to expand the Maine Human Rights Act to recognize gender identity. This is prescient, today, since the Governor of Maine in 2025, Janet T. Mills, leaned into this law while challenging the Federal Administration regarding the State’s support of trans children in public schools. Governor Mills is a star ally.
Pageboy is authored by Elliot Page and I avoided this book for two years, at least. I had expected a memoir that capitalizes on the current transgender spotlight without much depth — you know, a money grab. Besides, I didn’t think I’d be able to relate to a life experience written a transgender man, and someone significantly younger than me. I was very much in the wrong! Elliot present his life, while threading the needle of politics, with such humanity that there was no way I couldn’t sob throughout. I loved this book. I recommend this book.
She’s not There is Jennifer Finney Boylan’s first memoir and follows a trans normative narrative: an assigned male at birth child who always knew they were female but attempted to suppress those feelings. After marriage and children, she transition later in life, while still professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, United States.
Transgender History discusses the struggles of transgender Americans along side those of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer community. A pivotal moment for the transgender community occurred in August 1966 in San Francisco at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin district. A direct result of this uprising of the trans community was recognition and job training for trans people in the City.