LGBTQIA+ Nonfiction audiobooks

Love in a F*cked-Up World

By: Dean Spade

Narrated by: Dean Spade

Length: 7 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

In this inspiring self-help handbook, a trans activist dares us to be the change we want to see—both out in the world, and amongst our closest connections.

Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Many activist projects and... Read more

A Two-Spirit Journey

By: Ma-Nee Chacaby

Narrated by: Marsha Knight

Length: 11 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby’s extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby’s story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism.... Read more

Transland

By: Mx. Sly

Narrated by: Sebastian Marziali

Length: 8 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

A memoir of transformation and self-discovery that explores fetish communities from a gender diverse perspective. Transland is a fiery and revealing memoir that delves into what happens when a non-binary person goes looking for self-worth and a sense of belonging in fetish subculture, only to find that fetish communities come with just as... Read more

Transgender History, second edition

By: Susan Stryker

Narrated by: Emily Cauldwell

Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans... Read more

Enemy Feminisms

By: Sophie Lewis

Narrated by: Helen Phillips

Length: 11 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In recent years, "white feminism" and girlboss feminism have taken a justified beating. We know that leaning in won't make our jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. But in a time of rising fascism, ceaseless attacks on reproductive justice, and violent transphobia, we need to reckon with what... Read more

Better Living Through Birding

By: Christian Cooper

Narrated by: Christian Cooper

Length: 10 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up.

"Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World

Christian Cooper is a self-described... Read more

Ace

By: Angela Chen

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity.

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, about romance and... Read more

Before We Were Trans

By: Dr. Kit Heyam

Narrated by: Dr. Kit Heyam

Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity  

Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.  
 
Before We Were Trans illuminates... Read more

None of the Above

By: Travis Alabanza

Narrated by: Travis Alabanza

Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

In None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary, Travis Alabanza considers seven phrases people have directed at them throughout their life. These phrases—some deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or violent, some celebratory—have fundamentally shaped Alabanza, both for better and for worse. But these phrases also... Read more

The Transgender Issue

By: Shon Faye

Narrated by: Shon Faye

Length: 9 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

An incisive case for trans justice from a powerful new voice



In this brilliant introduction to trans politics, journalist Shon Faye gives an incisive overview of systemic transphobia and argues that the struggle for trans rights is necessary to any struggle for social justice.



So often, Faye argues, trans people are understood as a "side issue,"... Read more

Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler

Narrated by: Judith Butler

Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Time, Elle, Kirkus, Literary Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them.

"A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein

"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine

From a global icon, a bold, essential... Read more

Gender Euphoria

By: Laura Kate Dale

Narrated by: Laura Kate Dale

Length: 8 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

GENDER EUPHORIA: a powerful feeling of happiness experienced as a result of moving away from one's birth-assigned gender. So often the stories shared by trans people about their transition center on gender dysphoria: a feeling of deep discomfort with their birth-assigned gender, and a powerful catalyst for coming out or transitioning. But for... Read more

Love and Rage

By: Lama Rod Owens

Narrated by: Lama Rod Owens

Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER
 
In the face of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence, how can we metabolize our anger into a force for liberation?

White supremacy in the United States has long necessitated that Black rage be suppressed, repressed, or denied, often as a means of survival, a literal matter of life and death. In Love and... Read more

All Boys Aren't Blue

By: George M. Johnson

Narrated by: George M. Johnson

Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue explores their childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia.

A New York Times Bestseller!
Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, Today Show, and MSNBC feature stories

From... Read more

A Queer History of the United States

By: Michael Bronski

Narrated by: Vikas Adams

Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction

The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.

In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima... Read more

A Short History of Trans Misogyny

By: Jules Gill-Peterson

Narrated by: Charli Burrow

Length: 5 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

"A beautifully written and argued book." —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby



There is no shortage of voices demanding everyone pay attention to the violence trans women suffer. But one frighteningly basic question seems never to be answered: why does it happen? If men are not inherently evil and trans women do not intrinsically invite... Read more

Cruising Utopia

By: José Esteban Muñoz

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 11 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

The LGBT agenda for too long has been dominated by pragmatic issues like same-sex marriage and gays in the military. It has been stifled by this myopic focus on the present, which is short-sighted and assimilationist.



Cruising Utopia seeks to break the present stagnancy by cruising ahead. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, José Esteban Muñoz... Read more

Sister Outsider

By: Audre Lorde

Narrated by: Robin Eller

Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action... Read more

The Risk it Takes to Bloom

By: Raquel Willis

Narrated by: Raquel Willis

Length: 13 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation.
In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women’s March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the... Read more

Swole

By: Michael Andor Brodeur

Narrated by: Mark Sanderlin

Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

From a Washington Post critic and self-described meathead, a witty, incisive, poignant exploration of male body image, from the history of the gym to the politics of superheroes to the world of manfluencers

Michael Andor Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an insatiable curiosity about masculinity—a concept in which... Read more

Road Home

By: Rex Ogle

Narrated by: Ramón de Ocampo

Length: 6 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

One hot summer afternoon, Rex Ogle’s sexuality is found out and his father gives him an ultimatum: you can be gay, or you can live here, but not both—and you have twenty-four hours to decide. Rex desperately hopes for a reprieve that doesn’t come, and the following day, he leaves. With no place to go, he drives to New Orleans, where he has the... Read more

Branded by the Pink Triangle

By: Ken Setterington

Narrated by: Bill Marchant

Length: 2 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

When the Nazis came to power in Europe, the lives of homosexuals came to be ruled by fear as raids, arrests, prison sentences and expulsions became the daily reality. When the concentration camps were built, homosexuals were imprisoned along with Jews. The pink triangle, sewn onto prison uniforms, became the symbol of their persecution.... Read more

Dear Cisgender People

By: Kenny Ethan Jones

Narrated by: Kenny Ethan Jones

Length: 6 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Conversations on the transgender experience may be becoming more commonplace but the topic is still all too often the subject of fierce debate. But behind the shock headlines, what does it really mean to be trans?
In this powerful, extensively researched, and deeply personal memoir, Kenny Ethan Jones, trans activist and writer, offers an... Read more

A Trans Man Walks Into a Gay Bar

By: Harry Nicholas

Narrated by: Ash Palmisciano

Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2024

'On the bookshelves, there was plenty of stuff on being gay, and much needed, joyous accounts of what it is to be trans, but nothing really that encapsulates what is it to be both - to exist in the hazy terrain between.'

After his relationship with his girlfriend of 5 years ended, Harry realised he was a single... Read more