Booksology Last month, when the video caught my eye, I was scrolling on Instagram. The creator is located in the bookstore – Later, which was identified as an Elliot Bay book, and has highlighted the growth of trans and non-binary YA books over the past few years.
I kicked myself by not saving the video because I knew I wanted to shine the spotlight here. The good news is that the moment I asked on my Instagram feed if I knew of the video I was talking about, I got almost 12 responses.
Meet Ray Stoeve, author of several books, including Summer Love Strategy, Arden Gray, and Perfect and Real. They were the mind behind the video and came from the incredible work of developing and maintaining Ya/Mg Trans and Nonbinary Voices Masterlist. This database tracks products that focus on trans authors and trans voices each year.
Here we are honored to talk about Ray’s database, some of the highlights and lowlights of the longstanding expressions, as well as their favorite trans and non-binary YA titles that all readers should get as quickly as possible.
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In the fall of 2019, I received a text from a friend asking if there were any recommendations for a YA novel featuring trance characters written by trans people. If I were your girl from Meredith Russo, she just finished reading, so she wanted more. I was an author of YA and was active in the YA community, but I could only think of one title. I hope Mason Deaver’s best came out earlier that year.
That seems to have been incorrect. I thought I needed more than one Transya title. I looked at various lists and databases circulating on social media back then, including the Asexual and Aromantic Chargeter database by Claudie Arsenault, LGBTQREADS by Dahlia Adler, and the work of counting LGBTQ+ YA titles by Malinda Lo. So I decided to create my own database.
The project has become YA/MG Trans and Nonbinary Voices MasterList. When I scrutinized the internet for Trans Ya’s novels, my interests expanded not only to catalogue the title. Not only did readers find books, they wanted to be a tool for everyone to learn more about how trans representatives for YA novels have evolved over time. Maybe I thought it would help publishers diversify their acquisitions and hold them accountable for supporting trans writers. So, when we tracked the book and author names, we also tracked other data points, such as character identity markers such as publisher, year of publication, gender, race, and sexual orientation.
There were more than three titles. In January 2020, when the Masterlist was published for access to everyone, I recorded 33 Transya novels since 2013, published by both the Big Five and the Independent House. This included titles that were already released and titles that were coming soon in 2020 and 2021.
The master list grew from there. In 2021 we had what we called the year of the trans boom. At that point, the most titles of the year have been featured. 19, including my own debut, between Perfect and Real, about the closet trance boy that appears when he was cast as Romeo in School Play. Today there are 119 traditionally published YA novels, of which 95 are character protagonists, written by trans writers and featuring trance characters on their master lists. He also praises the characters not only in intermediate books, but also in intermediate books. Readers used it to find the story they wanted, bookstores and librarians used it to build shelves, and doctoral students used it to use it for their degrees.
It’s extremely exciting to see the reach of the masterlist, the impact it has had, and how it has grown over the years. However, I am concerned about the lack of diversity within the TransYA acquisition. As I recently shared on social media, the racial representation of the Transya protagonist remains roughly the same in the five years I am tracking. In 2020, splits were 82% white letters and 18% color letters. HarperCollins led the pack with a total of seven titles, with only one by the Color Trans author about Color Trans characters. A random house of McMillan and Penguin followed, and was further divided. At the time, my data suggested that Hachette and Simon & Schuster had not published the titles for Trans YA. The independent house has 17 titles, only one of which features a trance character of color.
My recent count for 2024 shows a very similar division to the racial representation of the trance protagonist in YA in all houses. The number size has tripled, but the percentage is 78% white letters and 21% color letters. This is also mapped to statistics for the author’s representation. In other words, the number of colour trans authors featured by YA Publishing remains at around 20% over five years.
Rugs are similar to gender expressions. Of the 95 titles with a trance hero on the master list, only 11 of those titles have a trance girl or transfem. 38 Functions Trans Boys and Trans Masculine Characters. 24 Characters other than functions. The remaining titles are a much smaller division between Agender, Bigender, Demigirl, Demiboy, Jenderqueer, and liquid characters of gender. There are no two spirit letters in the list.
The master list is not exhaustive, but these numbers show that Trans YA is a microcosm of the continued disparity in children’s literature, as it relies on me and my free time to keep up with adding titles. As books on marginalized people, especially strange people, trans people, and people of color face an increase in prohibition, our lives and identities continue to be targets of erasure and eradication.
In the meantime, I am supported by the endless creativity, imagination, talent and perseverance of fellow trans writers, both past and present. We have a sacred basis for everyone who follows us. That’s one of the reasons why I write trance characters in every book. I want teens (and adults!) to read them, and to be able to be seen in some way a little more, and to read them. I know that our stories have an impact because my books helped me come out to myself and to those I love, and that they laughed and cried (usually both when it comes to my books). Between perfection and realism He hit the chords of trance people of all ages and especially those.
My second book, Arden Gray, is about questioning whether she is asexual about the queer girl who agrees with divorce and healing of her dysfunctional parents from her non-sexual abuse. My third summer love strategy is ROM-COM about two Neurodivergent Sapphic Besties that will make step-by-step plans to find your first girlfriend. My fourth worst-case scenario will be announced on January 20th, 2026. This is a romance about a non-binary teen with an undiagnosed OCD who must share the presidency of the school’s queer alliance with their nemesis.
There are five titles I recommend over the past five years.
Happy reading and happy pride!
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This week we highlight a post asking: Is reading a party the next big thing? People, especially readers, are clearly looking for a community. Is reading a party the answer? Read the excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
The reading community is everywhere online. From Storygraph to Fable, BookTube and Booktok, the growth of online reading peers feels exponential. But the problem with social media being online is that we are all stand-in-hand for the true connection we look for about what we love. Reading Roundups and reading reading tracking can be fun too. With that in mind, a reading party can be the next big thing.
Reading parties are different from book clubs because they show up to read instead of reading what they are discussing. At a reading party, you can make time to discuss what you are reading, but it doesn’t have to be all the same book. It’s more like a check of the atmosphere of reading than a book discussion.
Sign up and become an All Access member for $6 a month, then click here to read the unlocked article. Level up your reading life with all your access membership and explore the complete library of exclusive bonus content, including must-sees, deep diving, and reading challenge recommendations.
