Today on the site, we’re revealing the gorgeous cover for the brilliant Ana Mardoll’s No Man of Woman Born, a collection of fantasy stories featuring transgender and nonbinary characters, releasing on July 10! (See tags for more details on rep!)

Destiny sees what others don’t.

A quiet fisher mourning the loss of xer sister to a cruel dragon. A clever hedge-witch gathering knowledge in a hostile land. A son seeking vengeance for his father’s death. A daughter claiming the legacy denied her. A princess laboring under an unbreakable curse. A young resistance fighter questioning everything he’s ever known. A little girl willing to battle a dragon for the sake of a wish. These heroes and heroines emerge from adversity into triumph, recognizing they can be more than they ever imagined: chosen ones of destiny.

From the author of the Earthside series and the Rewoven Tales novels, No Man of Woman Born is a collection of seven fantasy stories in which transgender and nonbinary characters subvert and fulfill gendered prophecies. These prophecies recognize and acknowledge each character’s gender, even when others do not. Note: No trans or nonbinary characters were killed in the making of this book. Trigger warnings and neopronoun pronunciation guides are provided for each story.

And now the cover with a note from the author! 

I’m so excited to reveal the cover for this short story collection, which I feel I’ve been gushing about for actual years now! No Man of Woman Born is a collection of seven stories told from the point of view of trans, nonbinary, and gender-questioning characters each going about their epic fantasy lives mostly unaware that they are fated to fulfill seemingly impossible prophecies. If you enjoyed Éowyn’s helmet-pull, hair-tumble, I-am-no-man reveal to the Witch-King, you’ll love these stories as much as I do.

[That, but with 1000% more transness.]

I’ve loved epic fantasy since I was a child, but never felt represented in the old canon despite loving the classic elements–particularly prophecy, which is so often like a riddle you can only appreciate after the answer is in front of you. It’s been amazing and affirming to allow myself to really explore gender in a fantastical setting and build worlds that accept my complex, messy, never neat-and-tidy genderfeels.

So many characters in this collection are transgender, and all of them carry a piece of myself. Wren is an agender fisherperson who uses my pronouns and carries my autism with xer through the story. Caran is a bigender witch with magic that isn’t flashy, but is useful all the same. Nocien is a boy, period. Even when others struggle to accept his gender, the magic surrounding him never falters. Every character is accepted by the rules of magic that govern their lives, which is something I needed: affirmation so deeply interwoven into a world that even the laws of nature recognizes trans and nonbinary genders. We didn’t blink when cis authors gave us feminine moon magic, so why shouldn’t magical forces recognize a genderfluid princess?

At its heart, No Man of Woman Born is a work of love: a combination of my passion for epic fantasy and a deep-seated need to turn characters trans and set them free to shine on the page. For the cover, I wanted something that could capture their vibrancy and I was fortunate to work with the phenomenal Anna Dittmann. She beautifully brought to life the character of Finndís, a trans woman we meet in the story “Daughter of Kings”. Finndís’ rightful legacy has been denied to her, and she must now find and retrieve a magical sword stuck in stone and left in the heart of a dark forest. Anna perfectly captured the look and feel of this setting and produced a cover which I could not love more.

I hope you’ll love this collection as much as I do. All gushing aside, I think it’s an important addition to the fantasy genre: a glimpse into how normal and normalized transness and nonbinary genders can be in a setting. We can have these characters and have them not be unusual or weird. Each of these characters is special and they’re trans, as opposed to being special because they’re trans.

No Man Of Woman Born is available for preorder on Amazon! The book will be released on July 10th (the Tuesday before International Nonbinary Day, July 14!)

Ana Mardoll is a writer and activist who lives in the dusty Texas wilderness with two spoiled cats. Xer favorite employment is weaving new tellings of old fairy tales, fashioning beautiful creations to bring comfort on cold nights. Xie is the author of the Earthside series, the Rewoven Tales novels, and several short stories. Aside from reading and writing, Ana enjoys games of almost every flavor and frequently posts videos of gaming sessions on YouTube. After coming out as genderqueer in 2015, Ana answers to xie/xer pronouns.