LGBTQIA+ Nonfiction bestsellers

All Boys Aren't Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

By: George M. Johnson
Narrated by: George M. Johnson
Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

“After listening to this book, I was outraged to learn how widely banned it is across the country - This story needs to be told and shared. Read more

Transgender History, second edition

The Roots of Today's Revolution

Seal Studies

By: Susan Stryker
Narrated by: Emily Cauldwell
Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

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

American Teenager

How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era

By: Nico Lang
Narrated by: Vico Ortiz
Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

From an award-winning journalist comes a vivid and moving portrait of eight trans and nonbinary teenagers across the country, following their daily triumphs, struggles, and all that encompasses growing up trans in America today.Media coverage tends to sensationalize the fight over how trans kids should be allowed to live, but what is incredibly... Read more

A Queer History of the United States

ReVisioning History

By: Michael Bronski
Narrated by: Vikas Adams
Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

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

Queer Villains of Myth and Legend

A Revelry of Queer Rogues and Outlaws Through the Ages

By: Dan Jones
Narrated by: Dan Jones
Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn from, and celebrate.

Be captivated by stories of forbidden love like Patroclus & Achilles... Read more

V

An empowering celebration of the vulva and vagina

By: Florence Schechter
Narrated by: Florence Schechter
Length: 6 hours 55 minutes

Brought to you by Penguin.

The journey towards celebrating your vagina can be a long one. But once you set off, you'll never look back.

Are you ready to begin this all-important adventure, and reach a place of confidence and admiration for your vagina, vulva and incredible body? By the end of this book, you will be ready to talk about the vulva... Read more

Angels in America

A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

By: Tony Kushner
Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Susan Brown, Denise Gough, Beth Malone, James McArdle, Lee Pace, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Bobby Cannavale & Edie Falco
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Presenting an original audiobook performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, starring the cast of the National Theatre's 2018 Broadway revival.

In this production, adapted especially for the listening experience, Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, and the entire cast recreate their acclaimed performances from the 2018 Tony Award-winning National... Read more

The Future Is Disabled

Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs

By: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Narrated by: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

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

Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler
Narrated by: Judith Butler
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

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. 1�7 —Naomi Klein

"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity. 1�7 —Claudia Rankine

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

A Two-Spirit Journey

The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder

Critical Studies in Native History: Book #18

By: Ma-Nee Chacaby
Narrated by: Marsha Knight
Length: 11 hours 57 minutes

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

Neuroqueer Heresies

Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities

By: Nick Walker
Narrated by: Janet Metzger
Length: 6 hours 16 minutes

The work of queer autistic scholar Nick Walker has played a key role in the evolving discourse on human neurodiversity.



Neuroqueer Heresies collects a decade's worth of Dr. Walker's most influential writings, along with new commentary by the author and new material on her radical conceptualization of Neuroqueer Theory.



This book is essential for... Read more

The Deviant's War

The Homosexual vs. the United States of America

By: Eric Cervini
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
Length: 15 hours 34 minutes

“There is tangible power in knowing your history and feeling the love of those who came before you. If you're intimidated by tomes of queer nonfiction or jaded by corporate pride parades this is the perfect book for you. Read more

Flamboyants

The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known

By: George M. Johnson
Narrated by: George M. Johnson
Length: 2 hours 23 minutes

“Should be in every high school. All I can think of is how many young lives can be saved by listening to this book. Knowing your art, your race AND your queerness should be celebrated, not hidden. Read more

Love and Rage

The Path of Liberation through Anger

By: Lama Rod Owens
Narrated by: Lama Rod Owens
Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

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

The Sacred Band

Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom

By: James Romm
Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny
Length: 9 hours 5 minutes

From classicist James Romm comes a “striking…fascinating 1�7 (Booklist) deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes—and the saga of the greatest military corps of the time, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.

The story of the Sacred Band, an elite... Read more

Beyond the Gender Binary

Pocket Change Collective

By: Alok Vaid-Menon
Narrated by: Alok Vaid-Menon
Length: 1 hour 7 minutes

Winner of the 2021 In The Margins Award
 
"When reading this book, all I feel is kindness."-- Sam Smith, Grammy and Oscar award-winning singer and songwriter
 
"Thank God we have Alok. And I'm learning a thing or two myself."--Billy Porter, Emmy award-winning actor, singer, and Broadway theater performer

"Beyond the Gender Binary will give readers... Read more

The Book of Pride

LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World

By: Mason Funk
Narrated by: Mason Funk, Robin Miles, Eileen Stevens, Kevin R. Free, Charles Constant & Rick Adamson
Length: 10 hours 25 minutes

THE BOOK OF PRIDE captures the true story of the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, through richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the movement and made it happen. These individuals fought battles both personal and political, often without the support of family or... Read more

The T in LGBT

Everything you need to know about being trans

By: Jamie Raines
Narrated by: Jamie Raines & Shaaba Lotun
Length: 5 hours 14 minutes

Brought to you by Penguin.

Hey, I'm Jamie, a 29-year-old trans guy from the UK. I've been transitioning for 12 years now after realising I was trans (by accident!) at sixteen years old. I knew I was a boy since the age of four, but realised whilst growing up that I was different. It was only in my teens that I found the words to express who I was... Read more

Real Queer America

LGBT Stories from Red States

By: Samantha Allen
Narrated by: Samantha Allen
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST
A transgender reporter's "powerful, profoundly moving" narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states (New York Times Book Review), offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America.
Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's... Read more

Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler
Narrated by: Judith Butler
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

Brought to you by Penguin.

From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fuelling reactionary politics around the world

Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose influential work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing... 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

I'm Afraid of Men

By: Vivek Shraya
Narrated by: Vivek Shraya
Length: 1 hour 26 minutes

Named a Best Book by: The Globe and Mail, Indigo, Out Magazine, Audible, CBC, Apple, Quill & Quire, Kirkus Reviews, Brooklyn Public Library, Writers 1�7 Trust of Canada, Autostraddle, Bitch, and BookRiot.

Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Transgender Nonfiction
Nominated for the 2019 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award
Winner of the... Read more

Hi Honey, I'm Homo!

Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture

By: Matt Baume
Narrated by: Matt Baume
Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

For decades, amidst the bright lights, studio-audience laughs, and absurdly large apartment sets, the real-life story of American LGBTQ+ liberation unfolded in plain sight in front of millions of viewers, most of whom were laughing too hard to mind. From flamboyant relatives on Bewitched to closely-guarded secrets on All in the Family, from... Read more

The Women's House of Detention

A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

By: Hugh Ryan
Narrated by: Janet Metzger
Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

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

Gender Queer

A Memoir

By: Maia Kobabe
Narrated by: Maia Kobabe, Trini Alvarado, Stephen Graybill, Phoebe Kobabe, Jeremy Carlisle Parker & Full Cast
Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall  1�7 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

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

Radical Tarot

By: Charlie Claire Burgess
Narrated by: Charlie Claire Burgess
Length: 10 hours

Radical Tarot meets the tarot in a space of evolution, deconstruction, and creation, using the historical and common meanings of the cards as a launchpad for digging into limiting beliefs and societal conditioning and unlocking the personal truths beneath. The Fool's Journey is re-envisioned as a journey to non-binary thinking, the gender... Read more

We Are Not Broken

By: George M Johnson
Narrated by: George M Johnson
Length: 4 hours 3 minutes

George M. Johnson, activist and bestselling author ofAll Boys Aren't Blue, returns with a striking memoir that celebrates Black boyhood and brotherhood in all its glory.

This is the vibrant story of George, Garrett, Rall, and Rasul -- four children raised by Nanny, their fiercely devoted grandmother. The boys hold one another close through early... Read more

How You Get Famous

Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn

By: Nicole Pasulka
Narrated by: Nicky Endres
Length: 10 hours 24 minutes

A “funny, poignant, dishy, and even enlightening 1�7 adventure through a tight-knit world of drag performers making art, mayhem, and dreaming of making it big, this book is “the story of America now 1�7 (Alexander Chee, The New York Times).

In How You Get Famous, journalist Nicole Pasulka raucously documents the rebirth of the New York drag scene,... Read more

The 57 Bus

A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives

By: Dashka Slater
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 5 hours 43 minutes

The riveting New York Times bestseller and Stonewall Book Award winner that will make you rethink all you know about race, class, gender, crime, and punishment. Artfully, compassionately, and expertly told, Dashka Slater's The 57 Bus is a must-read nonfiction book for teens that chronicles the true story of an agender teen who was set on fire by... Read more

The Velvet Rage

Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

By: Alan Downs, PhD
Narrated by: Alan Downs
Length: 7 hours 14 minutes

The most important issue in a gay man’s life is not “coming out, 1�7 but coming to terms with the invalidating past. Despite the progress made in recent years, many gay men still wonder, “Are we better off? 1�7 The byproduct of growing up gay in a straight world continues to be the internalization of shame, rejection, and anger—a toxic cocktail that... Read more

Dining Out

First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America's Gay Restaurants

By: Erik Piepenburg
Length: TBA

As gay restaurants--rare spaces of safety and celebration for the LGBTQ+ community-- evolve and chart new futures, New York Times journalist Erik Piepenburg takes readers to Progressive Era Automats, lesbian separatist eateries, Wisconsin sports bars, pioneering drag brunches, and his own beloved diners. It's a culinary tour full of joy,... Read more

The Queer Art of Failure

By: Jack Halberstam
Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
Length: 10 hours 1 minute

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives—to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives. Halberstam... Read more

Transland

Consent, Kink, and Pleasure

By: Mx. Sly
Narrated by: Sebastian Marziali
Length: 8 hours 30 minutes

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

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

Sorted

Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir)

By: Jackson Bird
Narrated by: Jackson Bird
Length: 5 hours 57 minutes

An unflinching and endearing memoir from LGBTQ+ advocate Jackson Bird about how he finally sorted things out and came out as a transgender man.

When Jackson Bird was twenty-five, he came out as transgender to his friends, family, and anyone in the world with an internet connection.

Assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, he often wondered... Read more

Sexed Up

How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back

By: Julia Serano
Narrated by: Julia Serano
Length: 10 hours 19 minutes

The author of landmark manifesto Whipping Girl exposes the violent ways we are all sexualized–then offers a bold path for resistance Feminists have long challenged the ways in which men tend to sexualize women. But pioneering activist, biologist, and trans woman Julia Serano argues that sexualization is a far more pervasive problem, as it’s... Read more

Cruising Utopia

The Then and There of Queer Futurity 10th Anniversary Edition

By: José Esteban Muñoz
Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
Length: 11 hours 15 minutes

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

My Body Is Distant

A Memoir

By: Paige Maylott
Narrated by: Paige Maylott
Length: 10 hours 1 minute

An electrifying and vulnerable memoir that invites readers into an intimate conversation about our digital and physical selves, gender, and belonging. In My Body Is Distant, Paige Maylott writes about her life  1�7 both virtual and IRL  1�7 as she explores her authentic self and sexuality through dream-like virtual worlds. While Paige dances... Read more

Secret City

The Hidden History of Gay Washington

By: James Kirchick
Narrated by: Ron Butler
Length: 26 hours 14 minutes

"Not since Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history. 1�7/b>
 1�7/b>George Stephanopoulos

Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick’s Secret City.

For decades, the specter of... Read more