Best of
Trans

2022

Lakelore


Anna-Marie McLemore - 2022
    But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore’s only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.Then the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don’t want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There’s just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven’t spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they’re trying to hide.

Manhunt


Gretchen Felker-Martin - 2022
    Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt, an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival.Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate.Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe.After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror.

Exodus 20:3


Freydís Moon - 2022
    But the church is abandoned, decrepit, and off the beaten path, and the only other person for miles is its handsome caretaker, Ariel Azevedo.Together, Diego and Ariel refurbish the old church, sharing stories of their heritage, experiences, and desires. But as the long days turn into longer nights, Diego begins to see past Ariel’s human mirage and finds himself falling into lust—and maybe something else—with one of God’s first creations.

Dream of the Divided Field: Poems


Yanyi .Yanyi . - 2022
    "A book like no other: tender, and eloquent, a singing across borders, across silences."--Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, National Book Award finalistThe poems in Yanyi's latest book suggest that we enter and exit our old selves like homes. We look through the windows and recognize some former aspect of our lives that is both ours and not ours. We long for what we had even as we recognize that we can no longer live there. Yanyi conjures the beloved both within and without us: the beloved we believe we know, the beloved who is never the person we imagine, and the beloved who threatens to erase us even as we stand before them.How can we carry our homes with us? Informed by Yanyi's experiences of immigration, violent heartbreak, and a bodily transition, Dream of the Divided Field explores the contradictions that accompany shifts from one state of being to another. In tender, serene, and ethereal poems, Dream of the Divided Field examines a body breaking down and a body that rebuilds in limitless and boundary-shifting ways. These are homes in memory--homes of love and isolation, lust and alienation, tenderness and violence, suffering and wonder.

A Million Quiet Revolutions


Robin Gow - 2022
    In a small town with few queer teenagers, let alone young trans men, they've shared milestones like coming out as trans, buying the right binders--and falling for each other.But just as their relationship has started to blossom, Aaron moves away. Feeling adrift, separated from the one person who understands them, they seek solace in digging deep into the annals of America's past. When they discover the story of two Revolutionary War soldiers who they believe to have been trans man in love, they're inspired to pay tribute to these soldiers by adopting their names--Aaron and Oliver. As they learn, they delve further into unwritten queer stories, and they discover the transformative power of reclaiming one's place in history.

Return Flight


Jennifer Huang - 2022
    Textured with mountains―a folkloric goddess-prison, Yushan, mother, men, self―and peppered with shapeshifting creatures, spirits, and gods, the landscape of Jennifer Huang’s poems is at once mystical and fleshy, a “myth a mess of myself.” Sensuously, Huang depicts each of these not as things to claim but as topographies to behold and hold.Here, too, is another kind of mythology. Set to the music of “beating hearts / through objects passed down,” the poems travel through generations―among Taiwan, China, and America―cataloging familial wounds and beloved stories. A grandfather’s smile shining through rain, baby bok choy in a child’s bowl, a slap felt decades later―the result is a map of a present-day life, reflected through the past.Return Flight is a thrumming debut that teaches us how history harrows and heals, often with the same hand; how touch can mean “purple” and “blue” as much as it means intimacy; and how one might find a path toward joy not by leaving the past in the past, but by “[keeping a] hand on these memories, / to feel them to their ends.”

Lunar New Love


Ophelia Silk - 2022
    They've accidentally told their grandmother they'd come with their partner for Tết Holiday - Vietnamese Lunar New Year - this Saturday, and it's too late to take it back. Not only has Minh not been to a family gathering since their disastrous coming out three years ago, they also don't have a partner to show up with. The solution? A fake partner. And of all the people Minh knows, the perfect match turns out to be Cass Beauregard, the one member of their friend group they can't get along with. Cass has a goddamn problem. The day she dumped her cheating boyfriend, she challenged him to an eventual double date to show him just how fast she could find somebody else and how much she didn't need him. But now said double-date is on Sunday and Cass still doesn’t have a new partner. The solution? Minh Loisel-Tran and their own problem. When they ask her to fake date them for Têt Holiday, Cass agrees on the one condition that they do the same for her the next day. Minh and Cass are polar opposites: one too soft and the other too brash. There is no way one weekend of fake dating is going to go well... or is there? Minh and Cass might not be as incompatible as they thought. Will this little deal be just a parenthesis in their usual disagreements, or could it lead to something more?

Us Against the World


Shayne Prescott - 2022
    It seems most everyone on campus saw the TV series in which he was transitioning, and some feel very strongly he doesn't belong at the prestigious all-male school. Struggling with classes and bullying, junior Owen Lewis swoops in like Theo's personal savior. But as the heat rises between the two, so too does the torment from some of the school's lacrosse team. As a product of the foster care system, Owen knows all about not being wanted. That's why his lacrosse teammates are so important to him — they've become the closest thing he's found to a real family. Being bounced around constantly between different homes with just a plastic bag of his possessions taught Owen there was no such thing as love. But if that's true, why does Theo feel like a home he's never known? Owen is convinced that nothing will stop him from protecting Theo — but what if the choice is between his found family and his first love? When all seems lost, both have choices to make. Will they choose each other? Us Against the World is a 65K word HEA set at the fictional Roseden University, in Roseden, Pennsylvania. It is the first in the series of Roseden U books, and contains some derogatory language (LGBTQIA+).

If I Can Give You That


Michael Gray Bulla - 2022
    When Gael’s aloof father returns home at the same time that his new friendship starts to become something more, Gael must decide whether the cost of protecting his heart is greater than the risk of letting the walls around it down.