Trans Rights Readathon :: 2026

March 17-31, 2026

The Trans Rights Readathon is an annual call to action to readers and book lovers in support of Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) on March 31st.We are calling on the reader community to read and uplift books written by and/or featuring trans, nonbinary, 2Spirit, and gender-nonconforming authors and characters.Stay tuned for our 2027 plans!

Did you miss out on the readathon this year? That's okay. Resources are available year round, the StoryGraph challenge runs until December, and you can always support trans folks directly.
Help Nana Relocate to Safety.
Help Cleo Relocate to Safety.
Support Phade's Car Repair and Safe Travels.

About

The Trans Rights Readathon is an annual call to action to readers and book lovers in support of Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) on March 31st. This year’s Trans Rights Readathon will take place from Tuesday, March 17 to Tuesday, March 31, 2026.Founded by author Sim Kern and initially started as a small movement, the Trans Rights Readathon raised over $234,000 dollars for trans supporting organizations in 2023 -- with 2,669 participants reading 7,800 books across 43 countries.HOW DOES THE READATHON WORK?
During the two weeks of the readathon (March 17-31), read trans* books and donate to trans* organizations.
This is a decentralized fundraiser, so how you participate is up to you. You can read 1 book or 20 books. You can donate to a large organization or a personal GoFundMe. We have new plans coming this year, and can't wait to share them with you closer to March.

 
Call to action: Read, support, review, and uplift books written by and/or featuring trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, and 2Spirit authors and characters.Make content: Tag the new official @transrightsreadathon accounts on Instagram and Tiktok and @trreadathon on Twitter, and use #transrightsreadathon and #TRR26 when you post.Donate: We encourage decentralization! Participants are welcome to fundraise for trans aid organizations in their communities. If you don’t know of any organizations near you, suggestions are available on our website.

Graphics for 2026

Resources (2026 list)

Charity Recommendations

2026 Action Items

Offer Direct Support

Skip the middleman. Support trans folks directly.
Help Nana Relocate to Safety.
Help Cleo Relocate to Safety.
Support Phade's Car Repair and Safe Travels.

Contact Your Reps

Reach out to their reps to make it clear that trans rights matter. (Especially if you're an ally!) If you live in the US, apps like 5 Calls can make it easy to figure out contact information for your elected officials. Track Trans Legisation’s main site is out of date, but their phone and email script generator can help you model your message.Many policies that affect trans people are made on the state and city level. For US residents, check out The Movement Advancement Project map (specifically the “gender identity” tab) to see how your state ranks and what issues need to be addressed. The ACLU offers tracking for some state-level bills, too. Contacting your local lawmakers can have a more immediate impact on the safety of your community. Other state-level calls to action can be found on EqualityFederation’s member list.5 Calls can help you figure out who to call and what to say.

Write Love Letters to Trans People

Show your love & dedication for trans people by writing them a love letter.Write Love Letter to Trans Youth in Targeted States
Write Love Letters to Trans People in Texas
Write physical Love Letters to Trans Floridians
Write physical Love Letters for Point of Pride

Spark Conversations

Allies: Stick up for trans folks when we aren't in the room.Trans folks: Do something kind for yourself. Some suggestions for positive affirmations can be found here.

Support Local Trans Organizations

Seek out local organizations. Are they holding any events you could attend? Are they asking for anything specific, such as donations of clothes, food, or hygiene products? Do they have volunteer opportunities that work for your schedule? In short: what do they need that you are equipped to provide?If you can’t find LGBTQIA2S+ organizations, look for other options like food banks or shelters that may have specific request lists—according to the Trevor Project, roughly 28% of queer youth experience housing instability at some point in their lives.

Support an Indie Author and/or Bookstore and Other #OwnVoices Media

Engage with personal stories. Check out a podcast, watch a movie… or read a book! Visit your local indie bookstore (in person if possible!) and buy or preorder a trans book so that you can keep supporting trans stories long after the readathon ends. Bookshop.org and Libro.fm can be good alternatives if you can't buy directly from a local shop.Follow trans authors. Read indie books. Review honestly and courteously.

Signal Safety

Find ways to signal safety. This could take the form of adding pronouns to your email signature, wearing a pin, putting a pro-trans sticker on a laptop or office door, adding a patch to a laptop bag or jacket, or confronting anti-trans rhetoric in both public and private spaces. The Trevor Project has suggestions here.Unfortunately, this may require creativity depending on where you work or live, especially if you are trans+. This is one reason we need the people who CAN safely speak up to be loud. For trans folks: remember that your safety matters. And for allies: this is a gentle reminder that comfort and safety are not the same thing.If you're looking for a patch, sticker, shirt, or similar item and want to support trans-owned small businesses in the process, here are a few suggestions. (We're not affiliated with these businesses, we just like supporting trans creators.)

Learn How to Testify

Be loud. There are currently more than 700 anti-trans bills in the US, but as we’ve seen, testimony can gather bipartisan support.If you are a US resident, we ask that you review active anti-trans bills in your state. Regardless of where you live, A4TE’s guide on how to testify for trans rights can help you craft a brief, focused, and impactful statement.If you can, find an opportunity to testify in person. If not, consider how else you can share your testimony. Can you send your testimony as a physical letter? Can you post this testimony and tag your representatives? Let’s find ways to get loud about these issues.

Do Not Comply In Advance

Stand firm against the rising way of anti-trans policy (among other things). Some of our suggestions include:- Review the suggested list of noncompliant actions described by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services.
- Review the list of trans-supporting petitions on Change.org and sign the ones you support.

Support Libraries

- Check out trans books, especially intersectional trans books, from your library.
(If you can’t check them or bring them home for any reason, even looking through them at your physical library and putting them on the “to be shelved” section counts as a “check out” and indicates to the librarians that the book is still getting used.)

- Request unavailable titles through interlibrary loan, or suggest that your library purchase a copy through their purchase request form.

- Do a “deep search” on Libby for a trans books they don’t have digitally and click on the “notify me” button to show interest to your library.

- Consider donating the cover price of the book you checked out to a mutual aid network or a GoFundMe.

If visiting a local library or accessing their catalog through Libby is not an option for you, what about a library? Do you know about the Virtual Queer Library? What about the Queer Liberation Library?

Contact

Please reach out to [email protected] with any questions.