YA Pride’s LGBTQIA+ YA Masterlist is divided into seven sections, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Asexual, and Aromantic. There are many identities beyond/outside of these, but since there are so few books that feature protagonists with these identities, we do not have separate sections for them. We hope that this will change in the future!
The Masterlist is a resource that provides a list of widely available books that have LGBTQIA+ protagonists. This is not a comprehensive list. It is also not a list of our recommendations. Some of the books we’ve included have problematic content, and are not titles that we recommend.
We have excluded many self-published and small press titles. The self-published and small press titles we have included on this list are high quality, and many of them contribute something significant to LGBTQIA+ YA (such as a black gay main character or a book about a trans character written by a trans author).
Books on this list are Young Adult, Middle Grade or non-erotic New Adult, and feature a main character of that identity or a significant side character whose presence & story is very prominent throughout the book. (We broke this a little in the Asexual and Aromantic sections, since there are so few books with protagonists of those identities. In fact, in the Asexual and Aromantic sections, we included some non-YA titles.)
The masterlist is a work in progress, and we will be adding titles, different features, and other additions in the future. If you have recommendations on how we can improve the lists, email contact@yapride.org. If you notice we’ve missed a title, have included one that doesn’t fit, or have misplaced one, email contact@yapride.org.
We ask that you do not repost these lists elsewhere.
Gay
Lesbian
Bisexual
/pansexual/polysexual
Transgender
(including nonbinary identities)
Intersex
Asexual Spectrum
Aromantic Spectrum