A random collection of over 2078 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.
“Io sono lei: Storia della mia transizione” is a book that arrives quietly and then refuses to let go. It is not a manifesto, not a theoretical treatise, and not a victory lap, even though it narrates one of the most radical acts a person can undertake, the decision to finally live as oneself after decades of denial. Lucy Sante’s memoir of transition is instead a work of patient excavation, a journey backward through memory, language, and perception, written with the same precision and curiosity that have long defined her work as a cultural historian. What makes the book extraordinary is not only the fact that Sante transitions at an age when society insists that identity should already be settled, but the way she understands that transition as something that had been present all along, an underground current shaping her life long before it was allowed to surface.
At the beginning of 2021, Luc Sante sent an email to a small circle of friends that shattered the frame through which they had known her. At sixty-seven, she announced that she was about to begin her gender transition. The message did not come out of nowhere, yet for many it felt seismic. For Sante herself, it was the end point of a lifelong tension between what she understood intellectually and what she allowed herself to feel. The book retraces this long repression with disarming honesty, showing how a deeply buried awareness of being female quietly informed her choices, her sensibility, and even her way of looking at the world.
2025,
Interview,
Italian,
Lucy Sante,
Full title: "Sorry I Was Such a D!ck, When I Had One!: A Story of Gender Joy, and the Messy Road to Authenticity" by Dee McWatters.
How does a forty-three-year-old straight white man suddenly realize she has always been a gay woman? That question sits at the heart of Sorry I Was Such a D!ck, When I Had One!, a memoir whose outrageous title barely hints at the tenderness, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence inside. Dee McWatters tells a story that feels at once deeply personal and strangely universal, a story about what happens when a life that looks complete on the outside can no longer contain the truth growing inside it.
For decades, Dee lived as Darren McWatters, a husband, a father, a respected professional in the British Columbia wine industry, a volunteer firefighter, a hockey referee, and a deeply embedded member of her small town community in Summerland, BC. From the outside, it was the kind of life that signals stability and success, the kind of life that rarely raises questions. Inside, however, was a constant, unnamed ache, a quiet sense of wrongness that followed her from childhood into adulthood, through relationships, work, and service to others. The memoir does not romanticize this dissonance. Instead, it lets readers sit with the confusion, the denial, and the exhausting effort of trying to be someone you are not, even when you do not yet have the language to explain why.
2025,
Canada,
Dee McWatters,
English,
Interview,
Full title: "Get Off My Unicorn: Life Lessons from a Kinky, Polyamorous, Transsexual Lesbian Whose Kids Still Call Her “Dad”" by Katie Anne Holton.
Get OFF My Unicorn: Life Lessons from a Kinky, Polyamorous, Transsexual Lesbian Whose Kids Still Call Her “Dad” by Katie Anne Holton is the kind of book that arrives laughing, sits down uninvited on your couch, eats your snacks, and somehow leaves you wiser than when it showed up. It is bold, funny, intimate, occasionally outrageous, and unexpectedly tender, a collection that feels less like a lecture and more like a long, honest conversation with the smartest friend you know, the one who refuses to pretend life is neat, quiet, or easily categorized.
Katie Anne Holton is best known to millions of readers as a singular voice on Quora, where she spent over a decade answering questions that ranged from hilariously naive to painfully sincere. With more than seventy-two million views, her writing resonated because it did something rare, it treated human curiosity with respect while never taking human nonsense too seriously. She answered questions people were afraid to ask out loud, questions about sex, love, identity, parenting, and shame, and she did it with wit sharp enough to cut through hypocrisy and warmth deep enough to make even uncomfortable truths feel survivable.
2025,
English,
Interview,
Katie Anne Holton,
Full title: "The Evolution of Jodi: The Truth I Carried" by Jodi Gray.
The Evolution of Jodi: The Truth I Carried is not a book that asks for admiration. It asks for attention, patience, and honesty. Jodi Gray does not write to impress the reader with triumph after triumph, but to sit beside them and speak plainly about what it costs to survive, to heal, and to finally belong to yourself. The result is a deeply human story, one that unfolds quietly yet powerfully, rooted in lived experience rather than slogans or easy resolutions.
Jodi Gray’s life has been shaped by contradiction from the very beginning. She grew up in a deeply religious, conservative Christian household in North Carolina, a place where rules were rigid, difference was dangerous, and silence was often the safest response. From an early age, she knew she was different, though she did not yet have the language to explain why. What she did know was that being different felt wrong in the world she was raised in, and that knowledge settled into her body as fear, shame, and isolation. Severe abuse and poverty marked her childhood, laying the groundwork for anxiety and depression that would follow her well into adulthood.
2025,
Canada,
English,
Interview,
Jodi Gray,
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2025,
Canada,
English,
Interview,
Mandy Goodhandy,
Full title: "Gender Explorers: Our Stories of Growing Up Trans and Changing The World" by Juno Roche.
Juno Roche’s Gender Explorers: Our Stories of Growing Up Trans and Changing the World is one of those rare books that feels like both a mirror and a window. It is a mirror for young trans people who have rarely seen themselves represented with such honesty, joy, and hope, and it is a window for everyone else to see what is possible when children are supported in their gender journeys instead of being stifled by fear or prejudice. The book opens with a striking belief that sets the tone for everything that follows: children who are questioning and exploring their gender are the gender bosses we so desperately need, they are our future. In this spirit, Juno offers a collection of interviews that let trans children and young people speak in their own words, not as case studies or statistics, but as whole human beings with dreams, fears, humor, and a vision of their lives.
The structure of the book is deceptively simple. Juno sits down with trans children, teenagers, and their families, and together they talk about the things that matter most to them: what it feels like to come out, what kinds of support have been essential, what makes them hopeful, and what worries they carry with them. The voices of parents and carers are included as well, showing the way love and acceptance from family can transform what might otherwise be a hostile world into a place where flourishing is possible. The result is a moving chorus of voices, each one unique, but together painting a picture of resilience and joy. These are not tragic tales of suffering that dominate so much of mainstream media when it comes to trans lives. Instead, they are affirmations of existence, proof that with love, recognition, and space to explore, trans children live fully and dream boldly.
2020,
English,
Interview,
Juno Roche,
Full title: "Being Ellen: A Second Chance at Life" by Ellen Krug.
How often does anyone get a second chance at life? For most people, life is a continuous journey with only one opportunity to become the person they are meant to be. Ellen Krug, known to friends and readers as Ellie, experienced that rare and extraordinary gift. After living fifty-two years presenting as a man who often prioritized career and societal expectations over personal authenticity, she embraced her true self and transitioned into the woman she had always known herself to be. Being Ellen: A Second Chance at Life is a deeply intimate and inspiring account of that transformation, detailing the challenges, triumphs, and profound lessons Ellie encountered along the way.
In Being Ellen, Ellie reflects on her journey with honesty, humor, and courage. She chronicles the moments of uncertainty and fear, as well as the joy of finally inhabiting her authentic self. Transitioning later in life brought unique challenges, from learning the subtleties of womanhood to navigating relationships that had been formed under her former identity. Ellie emphasizes the importance of chosen family, particularly her enduring friendship with Thap, a bond formed in eighth grade that remained a source of unwavering support throughout her life. Through these relationships, she discovered that love and allyship often appear in unexpected forms and that the people who truly matter will walk with you even when everything else changes.
2025,
Ellen Krug,
English,
Interview,
USA,
Full title: "Debbie's Secret Life: The Transgender Experience" by Deborah Ballard.
Deborah Ballard’s Debbie’s Secret Life: The Transgender Experience is not just the story of one girl forced to live in hiding, it is a deeply human account of what it means to carry a truth so profound and yet so dangerous that it must be concealed at all costs. At its heart lies Debbie, a girl with a secret. To the outside world she appears to be a boy. Even her parents are uncertain about her identity, and she quickly learns that revealing the truth could bring consequences so severe that they might cost her everything, even her life. In this world of silence and fear, the question becomes whether she will ever find the strength and freedom to be herself, or whether her struggle will become a catalyst for changing the way the world sees transgender people.
The book weaves together personal testimony, raw emotion, and social critique, offering a voice to the millions of transgender children and adults who have had to live in the shadows. Debbie’s story is not one of fantasy or invention. It comes from the lived experience of Deborah Ballard, an American IT architect consultant, writer, and activist whose own life has been marked by both extraordinary professional accomplishments and the often-painful realities of growing up transgender in a world that did not understand or accept her. She was one of the early pioneers in the commercialization of the Internet during the 1990s, helped advance Linux and Open Source technology in the following decade, and played a key role in globalization initiatives that reshaped international business. Yet behind those achievements was the secret life of a girl who knew her identity from the age of two but was forced to conceal it.
2012,
Debbie Ballard,
Deborah Ballard,
English,
Interview,
Full title: "Dance Naked with God" by Barbara Marie Minney.
Barbara Marie Minney’s Dance Naked with God is a collection that challenges readers to immerse themselves in the raw, multi-layered rhythms of human emotion. The work unfolds in language that is emotionally fractured yet intricate, each poem resonating with intensity and vulnerability. Partway through, Barbara poses the question, “How do poets love?” and in doing so, she invites readers to consider love not as a simple, singular experience but as a force that is complicated, all-encompassing, and profoundly human.
Her poems teem with imagery that overlaps and interlocks like scales, creating a shimmering, chameleon-like effect that captures the kaleidoscope of introspection, desire, and spiritual seeking. By the final poem, the reader is left with a sense of renewal, an awareness that passion, grief, and joy can coexist in the same space, transforming the self in subtle yet profound ways. These poems do not offer a neat answer to the question of how poets love, but they illuminate the depth and ferocity of poetic devotion, the ways it can challenge and expand one’s understanding of intimacy, identity, and faith. Reading the collection, I found myself transported into moments of ecstatic reflection and quiet revelation, feeling the liveliness of my own resurrection mirrored in Barbara’s words.
2023,
Barbara Marie Minney,
English,
Interview,
Full title: "I Hardly Knew Me: Following Love, Faith, and Skittles to a Transgender Awakening" by Nia Chiaramonte.
In her memoir I Hardly Knew Me: Following Love, Faith, and Skittles to a Transgender Awakening, Nia Chiaramonte offers an intimate portrait of transition that is striking for its immediacy. Rather than narrating her journey from the safe distance of hindsight, she writes from within the unfolding moments themselves, therapy sessions, late-night reflections, family conversations, and the uncertain but luminous steps toward authenticity. The result is a profoundly human book that refuses simplification, capturing the painful, messy, and beautiful process of becoming oneself.
The title itself, I Hardly Knew Me, conveys the heart of Chiaramonte’s story: years of hiding, even from herself. “I used to be so hidden that even I couldn’t see who I was,” she writes, a confession that resonates deeply with anyone who has lived in silence or fear. That silence eventually breaks, sometimes quietly, sometimes with shattering force, in moments like posting her truth online, enduring the echo of responses and silences, and sharing vulnerable conversations with her wife Katie and their children. Through it all, Nia’s voice is both tender and unflinching, guiding readers through her discovery that authenticity is not only possible but necessary for survival.
2025,
English,
Interview,
Nia Chiaramonte,
Full title: "Both Sides of the Great Divide" by Nikita Carter.
Both Sides of the Great Divide by Nikita Carter offers readers an intimate, powerful account of her life’s most profound transformation, a late-in-life awakening to her true self as a trans woman. At the age of 60, after a series of shattering experiences, Carter describes how she was “broken open,” awakening to a new awareness that reshaped her existence and compelled her to live authentically, embracing a truth she had long buried.
More than just a memoir, this book is a testament to resilience, courage, and the relentless pursuit of identity and freedom.
Nikita Carter’s life is steeped in music. A celebrated musician, composer, educator, and producer, her artistry is deeply woven into the fabric of her identity. For decades, she has been a vibrant force in the world of music, touring extensively across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her blues-drenched, soulful sound is at once haunting and joyous, expressive and unmistakably her own. From early gigs at the age of 16 to performances at renowned jazz festivals and collaborations with some of the most respected figures in jazz and contemporary music, Carter’s career is marked by a commitment to pushing boundaries and exploring new sonic landscapes.
She has worked with luminaries such as Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell, George E. Lewis, Amina Claudine Myers, Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Anderson, Oliver Lake, and Marilyn Crispell, collaborations that have enriched her musical vocabulary and deepened her creative expression.
2024,
English,
Interview,
Nikita Carter,
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,
Original title: "Zápisky z tranzice" (Notes from Transition) by Daniela Špinar.
In Zápisky z tranzice, acclaimed Czech theatre director Daniela Špinar opens her private journal to the public, and with it, her soul. This deeply personal book chronicles a three-year journey of gender transition, capturing the physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation of one of the Czech Republic’s most celebrated theatre artists. What emerges is a raw, courageous, and moving reflection on identity, love, and resilience. Daniela Špinar’s career has long been defined by boldness.
A graduate of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, she quickly rose through the theatrical ranks, staging acclaimed productions in regional and Prague theatres. Her rendition of Vojcek at the Theatre in Vinohrady became a landmark moment, and she later collaborated with the avant-garde company Letí. Her artistic achievements culminated in her appointment as Artistic Director of the National Theatre Drama in 2015, the fourth person to hold the post after the Velvet Revolution. There, she not only directed classic works but also authored her own dramatizations and innovative text collages. Yet Zápisky z tranzice reveals a different kind of bravery, more intimate and vulnerable than anything onstage. In October 2021, at the age of 42, Daniela experienced a profound realization: she was a woman. What followed was a turbulent period of self-discovery, public coming-out, and transition.
2025,
Czech,
Daniela Špinar,
Interview,
Full title: "Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender" by Kristin Beck and Anne Speckhard.
Kristin Beck’s Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL’s Journey to Coming Out Transgender, co-authored with Anne Speckhard, is a raw and deeply personal memoir that provides a rare glimpse into the life of a highly decorated Navy SEAL navigating the complexities of gender identity. The book is both an account of Beck’s distinguished military career and an exploration of the emotional and psychological turmoil she faced before embracing her true self.
Beck’s military experiences, spanning 20 years and 13 deployments, including service with the elite SEAL Team Six, make for gripping reading. She recounts intense combat situations and the unwavering camaraderie among soldiers, but beneath the valor and discipline, she harbored a profound sense of dissonance. The memoir does not shy away from detailing the pressures of hypermasculinity within the military, an environment that often left Beck feeling alienated. Her transition was not just a personal journey but a public statement that challenged deeply ingrained perceptions of gender in one of the most traditionally masculine institutions.
2013,
English,
Interview,
Kristin Beck,
USA,
Full title: "Eva's World: A Real Woman’s Life" by Ella Marques.
“Eva’s World: A Real Woman’s Life” by Ella Marques is a captivating novel that immerses readers into the life of Eva, a vibrant, hardworking, pansexual transgender woman who navigates the complexities of both business and pleasure while traveling the world. The story is not only about her personal and professional adventures but also about the deep connections she shares with her three close friends, Linda, Olympia, and Victoria. Two of these friends are transgender, like Eva, and two are cisgender, yet their lives and expectations intersect beautifully, showing that while their experiences may have subtle differences, their desires, joys, and struggles are universally human. Marques paints a picture of a privileged transgender woman whose life is full of opportunities, travel, love, and meaningful relationships, challenging stereotypes and presenting a refreshing narrative where transgender women live fully, love deeply, and participate in the world just like any other woman.
The novel moves beyond simple storytelling, presenting a rich tapestry of emotions, experiences, and insights into what it means to live authentically. Through Eva and her friends’ interactions, readers witness candid conversations about relationships, self-discovery, professional ambitions, and personal growth. These dialogues reveal how similar and yet uniquely nuanced transgender women’s experiences can be compared to their cisgender friends. Marques deliberately emphasizes normalcy, aiming to dismantle the misconceptions that surround transgender lives. In the introduction of the book, she writes, “Yes, transgender women are women. They live, they love, and they can be quite normal. All I ask is that you open your eyes.” This declaration is not only a thematic cornerstone of the novel but also a direct invitation for readers to recognize the humanity, love, and resilience of transgender women.
2020,
Ella Marques,
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,
Ella era yo: Memorias de mi transición is the Spanish-language edition of I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, the extraordinary late-life memoir by Lucy Sante, one of the most distinctive and revered voices to emerge from New York’s underground literary and cultural scene. Translated with great sensitivity and precision by María Alonso Seisdedos, winner of Spain’s National Translation Prize, the book brings Sante’s deeply personal journey to Spanish-speaking readers without losing the clarity, irony, and emotional exactitude that define her prose. It is not simply a story of transition, but a meditation on truth, time, self-knowledge, and the long, often painful distance between who we are and who we allow ourselves to be.
2024,
Interview,
Lucy Sante,
Spanish,
Full title: "Enthusiastically Me" by Hazel Krebs.
"A journey of self discovery, covering only a few years, though a lifetime of emotions starting with despair and anguish created through expectations from family, society, and religion; eventually leading to discovering the beautiful life that was always held within. The journey uncovers the darkest paths of one existence, seemingly necessary to find the correct route for joyful happiness.
The story begins in March 2018, when the narrator, who is in the throws of a depressive episode, considers if this day will be the end. Along the path is the first stop at a familiar park, finding a bench that held the whole life for an afternoon. Eventually moving on from the bench and parts of the life, there is a meeting at that very bench, which is frustrating at first; however, later becomes the start of a new path. This time perhaps with a helpful trailblazer to join.
2024,
English,
Hazel Krebs,
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,
Full title: "Not Ded Aslepe" by Iden Crockett.
"Not Ded Aslepe is an illustrated collection of poetry chronicling the author's emotions as she explores her gender, PTSD, OSDD, eating disorder, self injury, love, sexuality, and friendship. The collection is centered around the non-linear poetic narrative of the author and her primary other. The story unfolds through the meeting of this shadow sister, attempting to resist their influence, and ultimately accepting Them as a part of themselves.
his collection is a frank and unflinching look into one person's struggle to discover themselves while maintaining sanity. It is a celebration of love and sexuality, queerness, gender expression, and a powerful commentary on the duality of the soul.
This collection features eighty poems and is beautifully illustrated with nearly thirty original digital collages. The artwork for this collection was created by the author and is a re-interpretation of previously created work. Words and images combine to create a profoundly affecting piece of art. Not Ded Aslepe is a truly honest look at the author's mind. All of the beauty, horror, sensuality, and joy of a life is on display here."
2023,
English,
Iden Crockett,
Interview,
