The Nonbinarian Recommends: Nonfiction

It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful

How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

By: Jack Lowery
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
Length: 14 hours 9 minutes

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

It Came from the Closet

Queer Reflections on Horror

By: Joe Vallese & various authors
Narrated by: various narrators, Graham Halstead, Aven Shore, Aida Reluzco, Mark Sanderlin, Tori Barron, Krystal Hammond, Daniel Henning, Ron Butler, Hope Newhouse, Lindsey Dorcus, André Santana, Joel Froomkin, Mike Cooper, Em Grosland & Vikas Adam
Length: 10 hours 58 minutes

Through the lens of horror—from Halloween to Hereditary—queer and trans writers consider the films that deepened, amplified, and illuminated their own experiences.Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist... Read more

Quietly Hostile

Essays

By: Samantha Irby
Narrated by: Samantha Irby
Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

“Quietly Hostile only reinforced the love I already have for Samantha Irby’s writing. I love listening to frank and humorous way she tackles everything from relationships to Red Lobster to bodily functions. Her books, especially the audio recordings, are always ones I look forward to! Read more

Pageboy

A Memoir

By: Elliot Page
Narrated by: Elliot Page
Length: 8 hours 23 minutes

“While this book can be all over the place as far as timeline goes, it is also moving and fun as well as being educational and at times very brutal. Elliot Page does not hold back when discussing his feelings and the events that he went through in his career and personal life. Read more

Hijab Butch Blues

A Memoir

By: Lamya H
Narrated by: Ashraf Shirazi
Length: 7 hours 32 minutes

“This memoir absolutely blew me away. Structured around stories from the Qur'an, Lamya H beautifully explores the intersections between faith, identity, culture, and belonging. I learned so much while reading this book, and really valued Lamya's unique perspective on queerness and religion. Incredibly raw and honest, this is a memoir I will be... Read more

Ace

What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

By: Angela Chen
Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
Length: 7 hours 43 minutes

“This book is an eye-opening collection of personal testimonies, research, and history about asexuality, and to a lesser extent, aromanticism. Whether you are new to learning about asexuality or are asexual yourself, by the end of the book you will have a richer and multifaceted understanding of ace identity and experience. Read more

Hola Papi

How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons

A Must-Read Memoir

By: John Paul Brammer
Narrated by: John Paul Brammer
Length: 4 hours 55 minutes

“Gay and Chicano advice columnist J.P. Brammer offers lessons for LGBTQIA+ people (and really anyone) based off his youth, past dating experiences, and coming into his identities. Brammer approaches his reflections with a mixture of sass and sensitivity, thus making for a highly enjoyable read. Read more

Gay New York

Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

By: George Chauncey
Narrated by: Graham Halstead
Length: 18 hours 40 minutes

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

This Book Is Gay

By: Juno Dawson
Narrated by: Christopher Solimene
Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

Lesbian. Bisexual. Queer. Transgender. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for you.



There's a long-running joke that, after "coming out," a lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and... Read more

Sister Outsider

Essays and Speeches

Crossing Press Feminist: Book #1

By: Audre Lorde
Narrated by: Robin Eller
Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

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

And the Category Is.

Inside New York's Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community

By: Ricky Tucker
Narrated by: Ricky Tucker
Length: 8 hours 48 minutes

A 2023 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Nonfiction

An Electric Literature “Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of 2022” Selection

A love letter to the legendary Black and Latinx LGBTQ underground subculture, uncovering its abundant legacy and influence in popular culture.

What is Ballroom? Not a song, a documentary, a catchphrase, a TV show, or an... Read more

Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much

By: Jen Winston
Narrated by: Jen Winston
Length: 7 hours 29 minutes

Named one of the Best Books of 2021 by Oprah Daily, Glamour, Shondaland, BuzzFeed, and more!

A hilarious and whip-smart collection of essays, offering an intimate look at bisexuality, gender, and, of course, sex. Perfect for fans of Lindy West, Samantha Irby, and Rebecca Solnit—and anyone who wants, and deserves, to be seen.

If Jen Winston knows... Read more

Looking for Lorraine

The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

By: Imani Perry
Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction

Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018

A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet... Read more

When We Rise

My Life in the Movement

By: Cleve Jones
Narrated by: Cleve Jones
Length: 9 hours 31 minutes

This sweeping memoir tells the life story of longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist Cleve Jones in a profoundly moving account from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his involvement with the marriage equality battle. Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering... Read more

Black Trans Feminism

By: Marquis Bey
Narrated by: Marquis Bey
Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

In Black Trans Feminism Marquis Bey offers a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each. Theorizing black trans feminism from the vantages of abolition and gender radicality, Bey articulates blackness as a mutiny against racializing categorizations; transness as a... Read more

Sissy

A Coming-of-Gender Story

By: Jacob Tobia
Narrated by: Jacob Tobia
Length: 11 hours 20 minutes

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Transformative ... If Tobia aspires to the ranks of comic memoirists like David Sedaris and Mindy Kaling, Sissy succeeds." --The New York Times Book Review

A heart-wrenching, eye-opening, and giggle-inducing memoir about what it's like to grow up not sure if you're (a) a boy, (b) a girl, (c) something in between, or (d)... Read more

Be Not Afraid of Love

Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection

By: Mimi Zhu
Narrated by: Mimi Zhu
Length: 7 hours 12 minutes

“Radical and revolutionary.” —Jonny Sun, New York Times bestselling author of Goodbye, Again
 
A collection of powerful interconnected essays and affirmations that follow Mimi Zhu’s journey toward embodying and re-learning love after a violent romantic relationship, a stunning and provocative book that will guide and inspire readers to lean into... Read more

Body Work

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

By: Melissa Febos
Narrated by: Melissa Febos
Length: 3 hours 35 minutes

“This book is both a self-reflection piece and a tender yet valiant meditation on the power of writing. Anyone that approaches their work through an autoethnographic lens would benefit from tools Febos so kindly lends to us in Body Work. Read more

The Stonewall Reader

By: New York Public Library
Narrated by: Various
Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

"...a remarkable audio experience that emphasizes the revolutionary power of LGBTQ voices and provides an invaluable record of a community that refuses to be silenced." -AudioFile magazine Earphones Award winner

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and... Read more

Animal Joy

A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation

By: Nuar Alsadir
Narrated by: Kristin James
Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter's revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir's... Read more