“Being a human is hard work, but it's easier to carry that load together. Keep showing up and extending grace for yourself and others.”
—Mx. Pucks A'Plenty (they/them/yas queen)
Every year on July 14, International Non-Binary Day honors those whose identities defy binary labels and embrace the full expanse of possibility. It’s a day to celebrate trans and non-binary, agender, gender-expansive, and gender-nonconforming people for exactly who they are: vibrant, powerful, infinite.
Non-binary people are poets and storytellers, parents and punks, rebels and caretakers. They are living proof that gender is not a limitation, but a galaxy. Today, we uplift their words—the ones that challenge us, heal us, and remind us of what it means to belong.
Poetry by Non-Binary Poets
Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, edited by Trace Peterson and TC Tolbert
A groundbreaking anthology of trans and genderqueer poets—a must-have for any poetry lover craving raw honesty and lyrical revolution.
Time is a Mother, by Ocean Vuong
This collection from Ocean Vuong, a queer and gender-expansive poet, explores grief, tenderness, and the ache of becoming. With language as soft as it is sharp, these poems reach for healing in the wake of loss.
How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, these poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 …
X/Ex/Exis: Poemas Para La Nación, by Raquel Salas Rivera
Written in Spanish and English, this unapologetic and electrifying collection by non-binary Puerto Rican poet Raquel Salas Rivera challenges colonialism, gender norms, and erasure. Their poems weave resistance and intimacy into a vision of nationhood rooted in queer liberation.
Written in the early days of the rise of world-wide fascism and the poet’s gender transition, x/ex/exis: poemas para la nación/poems for the nation accepts the invitation to push poetic and gender imaginaries beyond the bounds set by nation.
From teen dysphoria, to the incarceration of anticolonial activists Oscar López and Nina Droz Franco, to the entanglement of church and state, these poems acknowledge the violence of imposed binaries. For Salas Rivera, the x marks Puerto Rican transness in a world that seeks trans death, denial, and erasure. Instead of justifying his existence, he takes up the flag of illegibility and writes an apocalyptic book that screams into an uncertain future, armed with nothing to lose.
In today’s post-disaster Puerto Rico and a world shaped by the recurring waves of an ecological apocalypse, Salas Rivera’s words feel visionary, mapping a decolonizing territory, a body, and identity of both soil and heart.
“The world keeps giving us goodness all around us, but we have to be open to seeing it, and then believe that it is meant for us. The world wants us to thrive. Anything less is a lie.”
—Rev. Evan Swance-Smith (she/he/they)
Fiction by Non-Binary Authors
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall of China. It doesn’t matter that the girls die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death.
But when she gets her vengeance, it becomes clear that she is an Iron Widow, a rare kind of female pilot who can sacrifice males to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her frightening yet valuable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest male pilot in Huaxia, yet feared and ostracized for killing his father and brothers. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will take over instead, then leverage their combined strength to force her society to stop failing its women and girls. Or die trying.
The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi
What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings.
As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens–and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis–the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations–a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.
Endpapers, by Jennifer Savran Kelly
It’s 2003, and artist Dawn Levit is stuck. A bookbinder who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she spends all day repairing old books but hasn’t created anything of her own in years–and with nothing ready to show at her major gallery debut in six weeks, time is of the essence. What’s more, although she doesn’t have a word for it yet, Dawn is genderqueer and she’s struggling to feel safe expressing herself.
One day at work, Dawn discovers something hidden under the endpapers of an old book: the torn-off corner of a 1950s lesbian pulp novel, with an illustration of a woman looking into a mirror and seeing a man’s face. Even more intriguing is the queer love letter written on the back. Dawn becomes obsessed with tracking down the author of the letter, convinced the mysterious writer can help her find a place in the world and also solve the trickiest puzzle of all: how she truly wants to live her life.
A sharply written, evocative debut, Endpapers is both a page-turning bookish mystery and an unforgettable story about the journey toward authenticity and the hard conversations we owe ourselves in pursuit of a world where no one has to hide.
Non-Fiction by Non-Binary Writers
Beyond the Gender Binary, by Alok Vaid-Menon
In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary.
Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today’s leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, by Akwaeke Emezi
n their critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world.
Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal.
Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes Emezi’s fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.
"We have the power to create our own reality. Dream it, Think It, Say It, Do It."
- Twiggy Pucci Garçon (she/her/hers & they/them/theirs)
To be non-binary is to exist beyond restriction. It’s a truth that doesn’t need to be explained—only honored. So today, and every day, we celebrate the non-binary people who shape culture, challenge the status quo, and embody the beauty of what’s possible.
For more books that celebrate LGBTQ+ voices, modern poetry, and queer joy, check out our latest articles.
