The Transfeminine Review

You know what time it is – it’s shortlist day! Today, we’ll be publishing no fewer than five shortlists celebrating the best transfeminine literature of 2025 as voted by our readers. Poetry is up first – from there, we’ll go Nonfiction, Author of the Year, Debut, and Fiction, in that order. This is one of the most exciting days of the year for me, and we’ve got a ton of ground to cover, so let’s get right into it!

This year, our five shortlisted poetry books are a great showcase of the breadth and diversity of transfeminine poetry over the last year, from instant-classic collections from indigenous poets to an experimental middle grade novel told in wonderful verse. If you want to support these awesome books, I would encourage you to vote! Awards voting will remain open until December 26th, 2025 at 11:59pm EST. You can vote here – the link will also be at the end of the list.

Without further ado, here are the shortlisted nominees for the Best Transfeminine Poetry of 2025!

1. The Shortlist
   1. Sage – Yaffa As
   2. Perverts – Kay Gabriel
   3. Local Woman – jzl jmz
   4. Glitch Girl! – Rainie Oet
   5. a body more tolerable – jaye simpson

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The Shortlist

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Sage is a poetry collection that acknowledges all transphobia is systemic but the pain of everyday interpersonal violence is still felt in our bones. A collection that highlights challenges and joy within interpersonal relationships from the perspective of a queer and trans Palestinian living at the margins of displacement, disability, immigration & ongoing genocide. Sage is a beacon of light, shedding light to wounds that have festered and rotted, and finding the paths forward as fascism claims more of who we are.

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Perverts traverses the psychic landscapes of Kay Gabriel and her community of friends, writers and organizers, piecing together a collective dream that both mirrors and transforms waking life.

Against the backdrop of the anti-trans panic, Perverts explores desire as a political problem. It asks two questions at the same time: whose desire is understood as dangerously excessive? And—a classic organizer’s question—how do we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want? Synthesizing her own dreams with those of her friends, Kay Gabriel’s Perverts is an exercise in turning private experience into shared consciousness and illicit desire into common cause..

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A pulpy, mytho-poetic dispatch from an “anarchist jurisdiction” that explores the liberatory possibilities of community and womanhood.

Local Woman, an archetypal figure, fresh from the forest into the streets of Portland, Oregon. She is a Black trans woman, seeking survival and satisfaction, giving seduction, disenfranchisement, and the contradictions of femme womanhood a face, body, and soul. In sensual, evocative lyrics, Jzl Jmz documents Local Woman’s movement through natural disaster, anti-fascist protest, romantic engagements, and an expanding sense of personal autonomy.

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J—’s life is consumed by the roller coaster video game Coaster Boss, and by the power she exerts over the pixelated theme park attendees. Her life outside the game, however, is less controllable.

Me.
I’m such a big space. I break the universe, a glitch.

She’s navigating ADHD, the loneliness of middle school, and an overwhelming crush on a girl named Junie. J— is convinced that Junie sees her as who she really is, a person who isn’t “bad” just because she doesn’t stay quiet and sit still in class. As a person who is realizing that the name she’s been given doesn’t really fit her. And that maybe boy doesn’t either.

Glitch Girl! follows J— from fifth to seventh grade, from the beginning to the end of her obsession with Coaster Boss, and to the start of a new friendship. When J— meets Sam, a nonbinary classmate, she begins to realize that it’s okay to not fit into neat, pixelated boxes.

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Ferocious and vulnerable poems about redefining acts of creation, destruction, deconstruction, and recreation, from a singular Indigiqueer point of view

a body more tolerable is a collection of powerful and haunting poems full of mythos, fairy tales, allusion, and magic. Divided into three parts, the book takes an intimate exploration of Indigenous grief, trans identity, and frustrated desires in ways that reject perception. Author jaye simpson conjures up dazzling multiverses throughout their mythic journey as they dance and run wild in their own manifestation of girlhood.

In these visceral poems, teeth gleam, graze skin, or sink into flesh, becoming bloodied and exposing the animalistic hunger that lies within. Pulsating with yearning and possibility, a body more tolerable is a book that resists typical notions of physicality and sex to dream of a world more divine.

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And that’s the list! If you want to support trans poets or see any of these books take home the final award, don’t forget to vote in the TFR Awards before December 26th at 11:59pm EST!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s already voted, and for everyone who helped us to grow our poetry reach over the past year ❤ TFR doesn’t maintain an Instagram presence, where many trans poets have their primary social media, so any shares on that platform are always greatly appreciated. We’ve got four more shortlists coming out today, so stay tuned for more over the next few hours.

Next up, nonfiction!