Books with Queer and disabled characters

[Johanna]

Hi,
I am queer and disabled. I'm looking for books with characters that are queer and have disabilities... Do you have any recommendations?

[Danis]

Most of what I read if fluff with HEA or HFN endings and the following are no exception:

How to Vex a Vampire (VRC book 1) by Alice Winters. One of the MCs is an amputee. He's pretty much all of the books. This author is known for snarky, sarcastic characters. So if you don't like those traits, I wouldn't recommend. I do and love this series.

Snow and Winter series by C.S. Poe. One of the MCs suffers from a serious visual impairment. This series is very similar to the Adrien English series by Josh Lanyon

I know there was one I read where the MC was wheelchair bound but for the life of me I can't remember it nor and I find it in my books.

[Danis]

Oh and..

KM Avery's Beyond the Veil series. Eventually. ( I don't think its in the first book) one of the characters becomes disabled. I won't say more. Don't want spoil it.

[Mariano]

A recommendation I could give is Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan, as well as its sequel. One character is heavily depressed while the other is an autistic savant and they gotta make it work. I am autistic but not a savant, so I'm not quite sure how accurate it is on the "my brain works like this" side of things but I would say that it's mostly believable and also I just think the story is really sweet

[Jutta]

Hi Johanna,
funnily enough, within the next few days, my first book in English is going to come out. :-) The central character is a lesbian woman with slight mobility problems - she uses a walking cane because of her hip disability.
Watch out for my romantic novel "Returning Home to Her"! (But there'll be an extra advertisment in addition to this announcement, too ... ;-))

[Johanna]

Hi Jutta,
wonderful! looking forward to read it in :)

[Storm The Tiny Hooman ~hiatus~]

I know this character isn't queer but Kids Like Us. It follows a guy the main character with autism

[Marc]

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay main characters include a young man that is a polio survivor (back in the 1940s) so his legs are affected though not paralyzed

SPOILER ALERT

and then along the way is revealed he is gay.

Won the Pulitzer.

[Celyn]

The Green Hills Series has LGBTQ+ themes/characters and differently-abled or neurodiverse characters. It's less about these topics specifically and more about just getting on while there's some weird paranormal things afoot. Low fantasy (i.e. mostly literary drama with some fantasy elements—more as the series grows, but it's largely grounded in the real world...

Any of the books can read as stand-alone.
Green Hills and Daffodils -self identity in the face of generational trauma and bullying, major character with Asperger syndrome/Autism Spectrum Disorder, major blind character (first 3 books), coming out of the closet themes
Green Hills and Dragon Tales - identity in relationships/with one another... starts revealing the paranormal underpinnings, new gay relationship, troubled lesbian relationship (off-page), Veteran with PTSD introduced
Green Hills and Fairy Bells - who we are in our community and family, a pride parade, minor character introduced with Down Syndrome, minor trans character
Green Hills and Holy Wells- questions of spirituality, we get to see our gay dragon couple as a straight (but scandalous) couple in the 6th century... the fact that the dragons are immortal and born to different bodies each lifetime leads to some interesting questions about gender-identity, I think. Our dragons get married, we meet a subjugated fairy halfling, a new gay relationship and a father's struggle to accept it
Green Hills and Battlefields (in editing - due out May 1) - the push/pull between the self we present to the world and the Jungian shadow-self of repression. In the realm of psychological horror, women's rights, equality rights and socio-economics of housing poor (fairies), trigger-warnings as it goes really dark..., agoraphobic character, another appearance by our Down Syndrome character, PUPPIES everywhere...

[Mio]

The Doctors Discretion by E E Ottoman is a beautiful short m/m novel set in the early 1800s in New York and has an amputee trans character as one of the main characters!

[Jutta]

Johanna wrote: "Hi Jutta,
wonderful! looking forward to read it in :)"

Hej Johanna,
great to hear that! :-)
"Returning Home to Her" is out now:
https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B0C1TG...
Happy reading - I hope you'll like it!

[Mees]

Wow Johanna, thank you for asking, I've been looking for books with queer and disabled characters too, as I am both of those things as well :)

[Jutta]

Johanna wrote: "Hi Jutta,
wonderful! looking forward to read it in :)"

Hi Johanna, hi Mees, hi everyone who's interested :-),
now the paperback edition of my lesbian novel is out as well:
https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B0C1JB...
Hope you'll enjoy it!

[Tierney]

Jutta wrote: "Johanna wrote: "Hi Jutta,
wonderful! looking forward to read it in :)"

Hi Johanna, hi Mees, hi everyone who's interested :-),
now the paperback edition of my lesbian novel is out as well:
https:/..."

Hi Jutta! I "looked inside" Returning Home to Her, enjoyed the opening a lot, so I grabbed a KU copy. It's in my tbr pile and I'm looking forward to it (I promise a review afterwards) 😀

[Jutta]

Hi Tierney,
wonderful, I'm glad to hear it! I hope you'll like it!
Btw, I just threw a glance at your own books and I'm really curious about your character Miri and her hot encounters ... Seems like I have to take a closer look at your stories, too. :-)
And it just so happens that I have a flight attendant in my story as well - who has a close encounter with my central character, even though it's comparatively harmless one ... ;-)

[Jula]

I found two books:
Like Real People Do
and
This I Promise You

[Tierney]

Jutta wrote: "Hi Tierney,
wonderful, I'm glad to hear it! I hope you'll like it!
Btw, I just threw a glance at your own books and I'm really curious about your character Miri and her hot encounters ... Seems l..."

Jutta wrote: "Hi Tierney,
wonderful, I'm glad to hear it! I hope you'll like it!
Btw, I just threw a glance at your own books and I'm really curious about your character Miri and her hot encounters ... Seems l..."

Yes, flight attendant! That was my first idea for the story, since I was one and I experienced/shared/heard about various sexy experiences while in the job years ago! You might also like The Woman in 3b (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...), which has some real things about being a flight attendant that I remember.

So, yeah, I'm happy to hear about the close encounter in Returing Home to Her 🥰

If you do fly with Miri, I hope you'll like her 😉. We did a Goodreads giveaway of The Paris Hook-Up, which ended the other day, and almost a thousand folks signed up! Which was nice 😀

I'm v looking forward to Returing Home to Her. I just reviewed Nicole Pyland's The Moments, which features the idea of right time and right place (logisically and emotionally) that I'm guessing underpins Returning Home. I resonate with the issue quite a lot.

Have a super weekend 😘

[Izzy]

One book I’ve read that has a queer disabled character is every variable of us. It doesn’t really have a lot of fluff though but it is really good. The general plot is a not very focused on queer-ness, but it definitely still has it.

[Kit]

I just started Safe Harbor and one of the protagonists needs to use a cane or wheelchair sometimes. I'm early in the book but already got the gist that this is a powerful (instead of poor victim) character. She knows Hapkido and has already assaulted someone with her cane.

It depends on how you think of disability too. If you include mental illness which is a wide spectrum and some might say includes many (most?) people in our world to some extent, it could include many many books. Stories generally entail some conflict and its resolution after all.

[Sojourner]

My friend, Nicole Zelniker writes mainly YA books about disabled queer characters.

[Nelle]

If you like SF, I just finished the fantasy book Godkiller by Hannah Kaner. One MC is a bi woman who uses a prosthesis, and is a mercenary godkiller, very BAMF. It's a very queer-normalized world. Another MC has 2 moms that are mentioned, and we meet 2 women who are married, both disabled.

[West]

Margo Zimmerman Gets The Girl - queer and has autistic mc with love interest likely having adhd

Fight + Flight - queer and mc with heds


Judy Heumann’s autobiography: Being Heumann or Rolling Warrior (YA version) - Judy Heumann largely contributed to the disability rights movements in the US. doesn’t focus a lot on queer rep but some mentions of that intersectionality if i recall correctly. i highly recommend especially if in the US


I have a really hard time finding rep for these intersecting experiences and usually find rep for these aspects of my identity in different books. I wish you the best of luck in finding queer disability rep!

[Marley]

does anyone have any books similar to red white and royal blue? slightly late to this trend but read it earlier and i really loved it. loved the political romance vibes. preferred lgbtq but not the deciding factor, more focused in the political romance trope.

[Archer]

The Pentecost and Parker books are cozy noir with a detective duo. The main character(Parker) is bi and has a sapphic romance in book 1, Fortune Favors the Dead. Her boss/partner(Pentecost) has MS.

Now that I think of it, I remember a romance book with a main character with MS. She was an actress, I think, and swore off love after her diagnosis. It's fluffy romance, so you can imagine how that plan went for her. I think it was sapphic but obviously I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Maybe someone here knows it.

[Natalie]

Johanna wrote: "Hi,
I am queer and disabled. I'm looking for books with characters that are queer and have disabilities... Do you have any recommendations?"

Hello,

Not sure what your genre preferences are but here are a few I read recently with disabled characters:

- An Unexpected Love by Klein, Koko
- All I Want for Christmas Is Revenge by Merikan, K.A.
- Cute as Cats by Fleet, Suki
- Billionaire Breakdowns (The Brotherhood: Legacy) by Farmer, Merry
- Darkness Falls by Miller, Jamie Lynn

Hope that helps!

[Rhiannon]

the spirit bares its teeth - Andrew Joseph White. The mc is trans and so is his love interest. The mc is also autistic. Its a uper good book fr.

[Allegra]

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao !! (scifi) The main character is bi and poly and uses a wheelchair for a portion of the book. I read it a week ago and I am obsessed with it :))