Gender transition seems to fascinate just about everyone who hasn’t gone through it, so it makes sense that we get a lot of literary fiction on the subject . . . All these books were penned by cisgender—that is, non-transgender—authors. In that, they join a very twenty-first-century sub-genre: sympathetic novels about transition by people who haven’t transitioned. Call them the Gender Novels—books about Gender with a capital G.
For The Walrus, Casey Plett tackles the problems with cis people writing the trans experience.


![National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”](https://therumpus.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/pic-Ty-Raso.jpeg)
