Crime Writers for Trans Rights 2025

                     Why this auction? Why now?

These are desperate times and we stand at a crossroads.

For the past several years, those in power have sought to replace compassion and empathy with scorn and contempt. Immigrants, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, and more have been made to feel disenfranchised, our very lives up for debate.

Of late, these attacks have specifically targeted the rights of trans people. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law reports “transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.” According to the Human Rights Campaign, the majority of these victims were transgender women of color. Everytown for Gun Safety found that, as lawmakers have introduced more and more anti-trans legislation, murders of trans people have nearly doubled. And perhaps most wrenching, are current legislation and Executive Orders that seek to further limit the rights and very existence of our trans siblings.

A group of crime fiction writers, all too aware of these difficult facts, have partnered with the Transgender Law Center in support of its goal to “champion the right of all transgender people and gender-nonconforming people to make their own choices and live freely, safely, and authentically.” Please watch the video embedded below to learn more about this vital organization and its work.

From March 26 through April 1, 2025, you can bid on a wonderful range of items, including from some of the most celebrated voices in crime and crime-adjacent fiction, with all proceeds given to the Transgender Law Center to help further their important work.

This is a wide-ranging effort, created and led by a group of writers who variously identify as LGBTQIA+ or as straight allies, all of whom are motivated by the urgency facing this particularly vulnerable community.

With your help, we aim to help the Transgender Law Center in their crucial mission. Together, we can navigate this difficult crossroads. Please join us as we step firmly toward justice, to fight on the right side of history—because trans rights are human rights.

If you would like to donate item(s), thank you! Please use this link to donate an item: https://bit.ly/TransRightsAuction


The Featured Items below are only a sample of the more than 200 items already received!

The Organizing Committee (an international group of crime fiction writers) came together two years ago in response to the increasing actions of hate aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community. Since that time, we’ve refined our focus and efforts on supporting the most targeted group within that community—trans people.

The tools of fiction writers are words and imagination. And we imagine a society where trans people—our friends, our family members, our co-workers, our neighbors, our teachers, our students, ourselves—have equitable access to the freedoms and opportunities we are all due as human beings, and as citizens of an inclusive and just world.

The Transgender Law Center is one of the vital organizations providing legal protections for trans adults and youth in the United States. This auction supports and celebrates their efforts. 

Organizing Committee: Cheryl A. Head, Greg Herren, Jennifer Dornan-Fish (writing as Ellison Cooper), Sandra SG Wong, and Susanna Calkins.

 Advisors: Robyn Gigl, Brenda Buchanan, and John Copenhaver