Oni Press will publish a special annotated hardcover edition of Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir. The cartoonist’s earnest, heartfelt, and intensely cathartic graphic memoir chronicling eir personal journey of self-identity has been widely heralded as one of the most important and influential graphic novels of the 21st century. Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition will feature all-new commentary from academic and creative communities to further shed light on the creation of Kobabe’s work, from exploring the technicalities of comic creation to highlighting personal anecdotes from a host of writers and artists discussing their own experiences growing up queer and genderqueer. The new hardcover edition will be published by Oni Press in May of 2026.
Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition promises to be a wonderful educational tool for years to come. Along with commentary from Maia Kobabe, the new edition features annotations from fellow cartoonists Jadzia Axelrod and Ashley R. Guillory, cartoonist and editor Justin Hall, cartoonist and educator Kori Michele Handwerker, designer and animator Phoebe Kobabe, author Hal Schrieve, cartoonist and comics professor at California College of the Arts Rani Som, co-creator of Lumberjanes and editor Shannon Watters, as well as original acquiring editor Andrea Colvin. Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition also includes commentary by prestigious academic figures, including Dr. Sandra Cox, Ajuan Mance, Matthew Noe, and many more.
In 2014, Maia Kobabe—who uses e/em/eir pronouns—thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created Gender Queer: A Memoir. Maia’s autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
Since its original publication in 2019, Gender Queer: A Memoir has been repeatedly cited as one the most banned books in the United States. It has also been widely heralded as one of the most important and influential graphic novels of the 21st century, earning near-universal critical acclaim as a seminal work of LGBTQIA+ nonfiction and ALA Alex and Stonewall Book Awards in the process.
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Source: Graphic Policy
