Queer Witchy Books That Everyone Should Read
- Proud Geek
- 31 minutes ago
- 12 min read
Why does witchcraft have such a hold over queer people? Why was Willow from Buffy such a gay icon? And why are queer-coded Disney villains always the best? It's because witchcraft is often an expression of otherness, empowerment, and self-discovery - all things that have close ties to the queer experience... but also, magic is kind of sick.
Whether you're looking for a queer alternative to Harry Potter or you're just looking to read about hot lesbian witches being badass, here are 20 LGBTQ+ books about witches, wizards, and homosexuals.
Juno Dawson
Adult Urban Fantasy
Queer Rep: Trans Women, Queer Women
Themes: prophesies & covens
Her Majesty's Royal Coven follows a top-secret government department of witches and the deadly threat to the nation that they must confront. Hidden among us is a secret coven of witches. They are Her Majesty's Royal Coven.
They protect crown and country from magical forces and otherworldly evil. But their greatest enemy will come from within. There are whisperings of a prophecy that will bring the coven to its knees, and five best friends are about to be caught at the centre.
Life as a modern witch was never simple ... but now it's about to get apocalyptic. Prepare to be bewitched by Juno Dawson's first adult series.
Jessi Zabarsky
YA Fantasy - Graphic Novel
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: swords & souls
Witchlight is a visually beautiful graphic novel populated with diverse, queer witches.
Jessi Zabarsky's lushly illustrated shoujo-adventure comic that introduces Lelek the witch as she blows through town one day, kidnapping the peasant girl Sanja. The unlikely pair grow more entangled as they travel together, looking for the missing half of Lelek's soul – the source of her true magical abilities.
Both women are seeking to learn, in their own ways, how to be whole again. This book collects the serialized story all into a single volume, including the heart-gripping conclusion and other all-new material.
Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker
YA Cosy Fantasy
Queer Rep: Non-Binary, Queer Women
Themes: witches & werewolves
Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.
One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.
Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.
Freddie Kölsch
YA Magical Horror/Mystery
Queer Rep: Queer Men, Queer Women
Themes: covens & demons
A 90s witchy horror perfect for fans of The Craft. November 1999. North Dana, Massachusetts.
Nesbit Nuñez discovers the partially devoured body of Bastion Attia: star quarterback, secret witch, and Nesbit’s even-more-secret boyfriend. No one knew why brilliant, gentle Bastion lived his life by a seemingly arcane set of rules, including a strange manner of speech and an inability to say his own name.
Now the remaining members of North Coven vow to get answers. Nothing can prepare them for what they uncover: Bastion had been locked in a terrifying battle of wits and wills with something living deep beneath an ancient mausoleum in the local cemetery. North Coven must confront the red-gloved monster that took piece after piece of Bastion, that he fought until his last breath.
Michelle Tea
Supernatural Anthology
Queer Rep: Queer Women, Queer Cast
Themes: myth, magic & power
An adult woman haunted by her childhood muses on the foster system, institutions, and the medieval tale of a girl given to a witch. A genderqueer Brooklynite learns of their past life as a murdered sorceress. An uptight participant at a Northern California witch camp finds community in the kitchen. A professor uses magic to help students under attack by right-wing politicians.
In this collection of manifestos, poetry, playscripts, and prose, the archetype of the Witch is honored and unpacked, poked and prodded, owned and othered. From work centered in antiquity, to writing which illustrates how primordial occult energies continue to enliven our world today. With work from CAConrad, Edgar Fabián FrÃas, Amanda Yates Garcia, Ashley Ray, Brooke Palmieri, Yumi Sakugawa, Kai Cheng Thom, Ariel Gore, Myriam Gurba, Fariha RóisÃn, and many others.
Aiden Thomas
YA Paranormal Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Trans Men, Queer Men
Themes: brujos & ghosts
Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can't get rid of him.
When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.
However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.
Charlie Jane Anders
Adult Magical Fantasy
Queer Rep: Trans Women, Queer Women
Themes: grief & family
Jamie is basically your average New England academic-in-training - she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.
Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.
Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.
Sydney J Shields
Cosy Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: bee magic & romance
Twenty-one-year-old Marigold Claude has always preferred the company of the spirits of the meadow to any of the suitors who’ve tried to woo her. So when her grandmother whisks her away to the family cottage on the tiny Isle of Innisfree with an offer to train her as the next Honey Witch, she accepts immediately. But her newfound magic and independence come with a price: No one can fall in love with the Honey Witch.
When Lottie Burke, a notoriously grumpy skeptic who doesn’t believe in magic, shows up on her doorstep, Marigold can’t resist the challenge to prove to her that magic is real. But soon, Marigold begins to care for Lottie in ways she never expected. And when darker magic awakens and threatens to destroy her home, she must fight for much more than her new home - at the risk of losing her magic and her heart.
Maiga Doocy
Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Men
Themes: forests & monsters
Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. He can summon butterflies with a song, or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Such minor charms don’t earn him much admiration from other sorcerers (or his father), but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face. Which is why Leo vowed years ago to never again write powerful magic.
That is, until a mix-up involving a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime nemesis, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite - respected, exceptionally talented, and an absolutely insufferable curmudgeon. The only thing they agree on is that getting caught using forbidden magic would mean the end of their careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. But Grimm casts spells, he doesn’t undo them, and Leo doesn’t mess with powerful magic.
Margaret Killjoy
Witchy Fantasy
Queer Rep: Trans Women
Themes: earth magic & power struggles
Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.
When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.
Jamie Pacton &Â Rebecca Podos
Cosy Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Women, Non-Binary
Themes: cosy garden magic
Yael Clauneck is the only scion of an obscenely wealthy banking family with its fingers in every pie in the realm. They’re on the precipice of a predetermined life when they flee their own graduation party, galloping away in search of… well, they’re not sure, but maybe the chance to feel like life can still be a grand adventure.
Margot Greenwillow - talented plant witch, tea lover, and greenhouse owner - has never felt further from adventure in her life. She’s been desperately trying to keep what remains of her family's magic remedies business afloat. So when her childhood friend and former crush, Yael, rides back into her life, she’s shocked. But perhaps this could be a good thing. After all, Margot could use an assistant in the greenhouses.
Krystal Sutherland
YA Paranormal Horror
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: murder & the occult
Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to bear - that her sister was murdered by a serial killer and there is precisely nothing she can do to change it. If there’s anything Zara cannot stand it's feeling powerless, so she decides she will do whatever it takes - even if that means partaking in the occult - to bring her sister back from the dead.
Jude Wolf might be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul is now slowly turning necrotic. Flowers and insects die in her wake and monstrous things come to taunt her at night. If Jude can’t find the right someone to fix her mistake, she fears she’ll die very soon.
Enter Emer Bryne: the solution to both Zara's and Jude's predicaments. The daughter of a witch, Emer sells spells to women in desperate situations willing to sacrifice a part of their soul in exchange for a bit of power, a bit of magic to change their lives.
Agatha Willow
Erotic Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: magic academies & romance
Luna graduated from Grimoire Academy and never looked back - until she gets a call about her beloved former Professor Herringbone, who left Luna her prized spellbook collection. Luna is forced to return to the place she thought she’d left behind for good.
Amelia is the last witch Luna wants to see. Once her high school crush, Amelia is now headmistress, and she’s in desperate need of Luna’s spellbook expertise. With the Academy’s future at stake, and despite her reservations, Luna reluctantly agrees to become a teacher.
But returning to Grimoire means facing Amelia, and the unresolved feelings that linger between them. As they work together, Luna discovers that the true magic might be in the undeniable connection they share…
James Tynion IV & Michael Dialynas
YA Fantasy - Graphic Novel
Queer Rep: Queer Men
Themes: hidden magic & adventure
Wynd lives a quiet life in Pipetown - working at the local tavern, out of sight in the secret rooms beneath the floorboards, often stealing away to catch glimpses of the son of the castle’s groundskeeper as he works.Â
But Wynd also has a secret… magical blood betrayed by his pointed ears, forbidden within the city limits. His shaggy hair has obscured them for most of his life, but now that Wynd is a teenager they are growing too unwieldy to hide.Â
Joined by his best friend Oakley and Thorn, the groundskeeper’s son, Wynd’s strange dreams and an encounter with the city guard send him on the most dangerous adventure he could imagine, where Wynd will discover the magic in the world around him and, most importantly, the magic within himself.Â
Victoria Lee
YA Dark Academia/Mystery
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: arcane magic & academia
Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School. Perched in the Catskill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students - girls some say were witches.
Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s history. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind her now; all Felicity wants is to focus on her senior thesis and graduate. But it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget.
FT Lukens
YA Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Men, Non-Binary
Themes: sorcerers & adventure
Edison Rooker isn’t sure what to expect when he enters the office of Antonia Hex, the powerful sorceress who runs a call center for magical emergencies. He doesn’t have much experience with hexes or curses. Heck, he doesn’t even have magic. But he does have a plan - to regain access to the magical world he lost when his grandmother passed.
Antonia is… intimidating, but she gives him a job and a new name - Rook - both of which he’s happy to accept. Now all Rook has to do is keep his Spell Binder, an illegal magical detection device, hidden from the Magical Consortium. And contend with Sun, the grumpy and annoyingly cute apprentice to Antonia’s rival colleague, Fable. But dealing with competition isn’t so bad; as Sun seems to pop up more and more, and Rook minds less and less.
Kalynn Bayron
YA Fantasy Romance
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: plant magic & mythology
Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.
When Briseis's aunt dies and left her a dilapidated estate in rural New York. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined - it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world.
When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri's sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it.
Kacen Callender
YA Dark Academia/Fantasy
Queer Rep: Trans Men, Genderfluid
Themes: class, power & alchemy
For Ash Woods, practicing alchemy is a crime. Only an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic - so when Ash is rejected by Lancaster College of Alchemic Science, he takes a job as the school’s groundskeeper instead, forced to learn alchemy in secret.
When he’s discovered by the condescending and brilliant apprentice Ramsay Thorne, Ash is sure he's about to be arrested - but instead of calling the reds, Ramsay surprises Ash by making him an offer: Ramsay will keep Ash's secret if he helps her find the legendary Book of Source, a sacred text that gives its reader extraordinary power.
As Ash and Ramsay work together and their feelings for each other grow, Ash discovers their mission is more dangerous than he imagined, pitting them against influential and powerful alchemists.
Sas Milledge
YA Fantasy - Graphic Novels
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: hedge witches & spirits
A visually beautiful fantasy graphic novel, filled with witches, curses and queer love.
Orla O’Reilly, the youngest in a long line of hedge witches, is compelled to return home after the death of her grandmother, Mamo. In the wake of her Mamo’s passing, seas are impossible to fish, crops have soured, and even Jo Manalo’s attic is taken over by a poltergeist!
And to make matters worse, it appears that the cause is Mamo, or her mislaid bones that is. Can Orla shoulder the responsibility of quieting her Mamo’s spirit, saving her hometown, and will she have to step up as the new witch of Haresden like Mamo always wanted?
Caitlin Starling
Dark Academia/Fantasy
Queer Rep: Queer Women
Themes: necromancy & academia
St Penderghast's is an elite college for necromancers and gladiators, promising glory to those who can perfect the arcane arts of graving or spiring. Graving, being the act of raising the dead and shaping their decaying flesh into eldritch abominations. And spiring, the divine-fuelled combat against undead horrors in grand arenas, thrilling crowds of thousands.
Halen Kilchoir would kill (and resurrect) anything to study graving at St. Penderghast's under the guidance of her hero, master necromancer Mortritis. But Hal cannot enlist the only way she can secure admission is to enter a dangerous accord with her mortal rival, Alastair Faulton – accomplished spirer and the infuriating, formidable exiled scion of the great Faulton dynasty. If they team up as spirer gladiators, fighting gruesome creatures in a cut-throat competition, they could both earn their prestigious places at the college.
As Hal and Alastair fight grisly monsters and ghastly peers side by side, mending their years-long feud in the resplendent halls of the college, Hal faces the horrors of graving, spiring, and the revolting prospect of a romance with her own nemesis.
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