The Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature honors exceptional work by transgender and gender-nonconforming authors. Established in 2016 and renamed for activist and writer Leslie Feinberg—author of Stone Butch Blues, Transgender Warriors, and other landmark works—the award celebrates literature that explores gender identity, diversity, and the lived experiences of trans and gender-variant communities.
Open to a wide range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, the award highlights the richness and importance of trans storytelling and advocacy.
The winner receives $1,000, underwritten by Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler. Eligible books must have been published in the preceding year, with finalists and the winner selected by a jury appointed by the Publishing Triangle’s awards committee.
In the list below, finalists are presented in alphabetical order by book title. Bold type and a triangle
indicate winners.
2025
A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest, by Charlie J. Stephens (Torrey House Press)
Dances of Time and Tenderness, by Julian Carter (Nightboat Books)
El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities, by Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (eds) (Metonymy Press)
I Don’t Want to be Understood, by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (Alice James Books)
2024
Adult Human Male, by Oliver Radclyffe (Unbound Edition Press)
Girlfriends, by Emily Zhou (LittlePuss Press)
On Community, by Casey Plett (Biblioasis)
Sinister Wisdom 128: Trans/Feminisms, by Talia Bettcher, Marci Blackman, Claudia Sofia Garriga-Lopez, Cecilia Gentili, Kris Grey, Shereen Imayatulla, Nadine Rodriguez, Cassidy Scanlon, Catalina Schliebener Munoz, Red Washburn, Fitch Wilder, and Sarah Youngblood Gregory (Sinister Wisdom)
2023
Against Heaven, by Kemi Alabi (Graywolf)
Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, by Cecilia Gentili (Little Puss Press)
stemmy things, by imogen xtian smith (Nightboat Books)
Togetherness, by Wo Chan (Nightboat Books)
2022
Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters (One World)
A Dream of a Woman, by Casey Plett (Arsenal Pulp Press)
The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes, by Zoë Playdon (Scribner)
A Symmetry, by Ari Banias (W. W. Norton)
2021
The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead)
My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, by S. Brook Corfman (Fordham University Press)
Trans Care, by Hil Malatino (University of Minnesota Press)
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel (Nightboat Books)
2020
Disintegrate/Dissociate, by Arielle Twist (Arsenal Pulp Press)
I Hope We Choose Love, by Kai Cheng Thom (Arsenal Pulp Press)
The Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian), by Hazel Jane Plante (Metonymy Press)
We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961–1991, edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma (Nightboat Books)
2019
Confessions of the Fox, by Jordy Rosenberg (One World/Random House)
Holy Wild, by Gwen Benaway (Bookthug Press)
Some Animal, by Ely Shipley (Nightboat Books)
The Soul of the Stranger, by Joy Ladin (Brandeis University Press)
2018
Don’t Call Us Dead, by Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)
A Place Called No Homeland, by Kai Cheng Thom (Arsenal Pulp Press)
Prayers for My 17th Chromosome, by Amir Rabiyah (Sibling Rivalry Press)
Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton (The MIT Press)
2017
Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory, by Qwo-Li Driskill (University of Arizona Press)
Chelate, by Jay Besemer (Brooklyn Arts Press)
Even This Page Is White, by Vivek Shraya (Arsenal Pulp Press)
A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder, by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louise Plummer (University of Manitoba Press)
2016
The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press)
Debridement, by Corrina Bain (Great Weather for Media)
The Middle Notebookes, by Nathanaël (Nightboat Books)
Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities, by Jackson Wright Schultz (Dartmouth College Press)