LGBTQIA+ Nonfiction audiobooks

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

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

Care Work

By: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Narrated by: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Length: 8 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award–winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for... Read more

He/She/They

By: Schuyler Bailar

Narrated by: Schuyler Bailar

Length: 11 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

From a trans rights activist and athlete, an urgent guide that changes the conversation about gender identity.

Anti-transgender legislation is being introduced in state governments around the United States in record-breaking numbers. Trans people are under attack in sports, healthcare, school curriculum, bathrooms, bars, and nearly every walk of... 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

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

The Future Is Disabled

By: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Narrated by: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and... Read more

Why Are People Into That?

By: Tina Horn

Narrated by: Tina Horn

Length: 10 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

From a #1 Apple podcast host, Lambda Literary fellow, and dominatrix comes a sex-positive, judgment-free cultural deep-dive into the world of kink.
 

When celebrated BDSM educator Tina Horn first launched Why Are People Into That?!, publications from Vice to Buzzfeed heralded it as one of the best sex podcasts around. Each episode centered... Read more

It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful

By: Jack Lowery

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Length: 14 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

The story of art collective Gran Fury—which fought back during the AIDS crisis through direct action and community-made propaganda—offers lessons in love and grief.

In the late 1980s, the AIDS pandemic was annihilating queer people, intravenous drug users, and communities of color in America, and disinformation about the disease ran rampant. Out... 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

Gay New York

By: George Chauncey

Narrated by: Graham Halstead

Length: 18 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

The award-winning, field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th century

Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents,... Read more

The Women's House of Detention

By: Hugh Ryan

Narrated by: Janet Metzger

Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

This singular history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century.

The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich... Read more

Flamboyants

By: George M. Johnson

Narrated by: George M. Johnson

Length: 2 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author and features music from Josephine Baker, Gladys Bentley, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters to enhance the listening experience.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of All Boys Aren’t Blue comes an empowering set of essays about Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance.

In Flamboyants,... Read more

Moby Dyke

By: Krista Burton

Narrated by: Sarah Beth Pfeifer

Length: 12 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

A former Rookie contributor and creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes investigates the disappearance of America’s lesbian bars by visiting the last few in existence.

Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987,... Read more

Look What You Made Me Do

By: Kat McKenna

Narrated by: Jade Ewen

Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

What does it mean to be a FAN?
If you're a Swiftie, you know that it takes commitment and dedication to be in a fandom. And there's nothing more rewarding than sourcing news and updates, anticipating new music and meeting fellow fans. But fan culture today is more intense than ever, from trolling to stalkers to online warfare.

So how did we get... Read more

Gender Queer

By: Maia Kobabe

Narrated by: Maia Kobabe, Trini Alvarado, Stephen Graybill, ...

Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

Abridged: No

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book

The ground-breaking, bestselling graphic novel is now available on audio.

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only... Read more

How the Boogeyman Became a Poet

By: Tony Keith Jr.

Narrated by: Tony Keith Jr.

Length: 5 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Poet, writer, and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. makes his debut with a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation college student who finds freedom in poetry. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, George M. Johnson,... Read more

Pretty

By: KB Brookins

Narrated by: KB Brookins

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.

Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for... Read more

The LGBTQ + History Book

By: DK

Narrated by: Willow Heath

Length: 15 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Discover the rich and complex history of LGBTQ+ people around the world - their struggles, triumphs, and cultural contributions.

Exploring and explaining the most important ideas and events in LGBTQ+ history and culture, this book showcases the breadth of the LGBTQ+ experience. This diverse, global account explores the most important moments,... Read more

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality

By: Sherronda J. Brown

Narrated by: Yu-Li Alice Shen

Length: 6 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

For readers of Ace and Belly of the Beast: A Black queer feminist exploration of asexuality--and an incisive interrogation of the sex-obsessed culture that invisibilizes and ignores asexual and A-spec identity.

Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong.

The notion that everyone wants sex--and that we all have to have it--is... Read more

Missing from the Village

By: Justin Ling

Narrated by: Justin Ling

Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men--the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur--from Toronto's queer community.
 
Shortlisted for the 2021 Toronto Book Awards



In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men--Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan--from Toronto's gay... Read more

The Deviant's War

By: Eric Cervini

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Length: 15 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

"Vikas Adam draws the listener in, expertly narrating Cervini's work, which charts the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States...Vikas Adam does an excellent job lending unique voices to real historical figures." -- AudioFile Magazine

A Publishers Weekly most anticipated spring book

From a young Harvard- and... Read more

Good Boy

By: Jennifer Finney Boylan

Narrated by: Jennifer Finney Boylan & Kelsey Navarro

Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

This program includes an introduction read by the author.

From bestselling author of She’s Not There, New York Times opinion columnist, and human rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, a memoir of the transformative power of loving dogs.

This is a book about dogs: the love we have for them, and the way that love... Read more

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