A random collection of over 1910 books and audiobooks authored by or about my transgender, intersex sisters, and gender-nonconforming persons all over the world. I read some of them, and I was inspired by some of them. I met some of the authors and heroines, some of them are my best friends, and I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing some of them. If you know of any transgender biography that I have not covered yet, please let me know.
Full title: "A Woman in Progress" by Barbara Marie Minney.
Barbara Marie Minney’s A Woman in Progress is not simply a poetry collection, it is a radiant, defiant, and deeply human memoir-in-verse that speaks to transformation, faith, pain, and joy with fearless authenticity. Winner of the 2024 American Fiction Award for Poetry Chapbook and an Eric Hoffer Award nominee, this chapbook reveals the tender interior of a poet who has walked through fire and emerged, not unscarred, but empowered.
Minney’s fourth collection may be slim in size, but it contains worlds, worlds shaped by courage, longing, fierce love, and a hard-earned sense of self.
Minney is a seventh-generation Appalachian, a retired attorney, and a proud transgender woman who began her transition at the age of sixty-three after decades of repression. As she shared in her candid interview with Heroines of My Life, poetry became her means of survival and resistance, “a way to document and process my thoughts, feelings, struggles, and triumphs.” A Woman in Progress charts the earliest years of that journey, unfolding like a spiritual testimony, an act of prayer, and a series of intimate conversations with the self and the reader.
2024,
Barbara Marie Minney,
English,
Interview,
Full title: "Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge" by Barbara Marie Minney.
Barbara Marie Minney’s Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge is a remarkable testament to the power of poetry as a vehicle for personal truth, identity, and resilience. As the second poetry collection by this award-winning Appalachian poet, writer, and activist, this chapbook continues to build on the rich foundation established in her debut If There’s No Heaven, which itself won the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and was recognized as an Akron Beacon Journal Best Northeast Ohio Book.
Barbara Marie Minney is a native of West Virginia and a proud seventh-generation Appalachian. She brings to her work a unique perspective shaped by her heritage, her lived experience as a transgender woman, and her lifelong dedication to both craft and advocacy.
This intersectional identity imbues her poetry with a rare authenticity and courage, creating works that resonate deeply with readers across diverse communities.
The Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge is aptly named, as it challenges both the author and her readers to engage with poetry not just as a literary form, but as a means of memoir, capturing the intimate, complex, and sometimes painful experiences that define a life. The collection feels like a heartfelt conversation, revealing Barbara’s ongoing journey with identity, love, loss, and the search for belonging.
2021,
Barbara Marie Minney,
English,
Interview,
Full title: "If There's No Heaven" by Barbara Marie Minney.
Barbara Marie Minney’s If There’s No Heaven is a profoundly moving and courageous poetry collection that charts the deeply personal journey of a transgender woman embracing her authentic self later in life. As a native of West Virginia and a seventh-generation Appalachian, Barbara brings a distinctive voice shaped by her rich cultural roots, her Christian faith, and her complex experience of gender transition at age sixty-three after decades of repression.
Winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and recognized as an Akron Beacon Journal Best Northeast Ohio Book that same year, If There’s No Heaven is much more than a collection of poems. It is a lyrical memoir that serves as both an intimate confession and a bold challenge to societal norms and stereotypes surrounding gender, faith, and identity.
Barbara’s poetry unfolds with a raw honesty and clarity that invites readers into the first two years of her transition. As she writes, these pages document not only her struggles and triumphs but also the process of reclaiming her identity as the woman she was “always intended to be,” a journey she undertook after repressing her true gender for over sixty years.
2020,
Barbara Marie Minney,
English,
Interview,
