Favorite Andrew Joseph White short story
You don't have to have read all these stories to have an opinion on this and take part in the poll, you just have to have a favorite AJW short story, aka have read more than one and like one more than the other or even just have read a single story and really, really liked it. This is all just for fun.
I'll put info on which short story is which, where you can find them, and their CWs under the poll. If they're in an anthology, I'll provide the goodreads page for it so you have the info you need to find an acquire the anthology. This poll will run for a full week, so if you want to check a few (more) of these stories out before voting, you most likely have time for that.
Which short story by Andrew Joseph White is your personal favorite?
Chokechain (2018)
Dead Air (2019)
The Foal With Two Heads (2021)
The Follower, or: Psalm 127:3 (2021)
The Constellations Are Unrecognizable Here (2021)
Who Were You, What Are You (2023)
Oathbreaker (2025)
I don't know/I can't pick a favorite
I haven't read any of them/Show results
Chokechain (2018):
This is the story about the trans guy coming home from university to find that his parents have commissioned a pre-transition android of him.
CWs for Chokechain are: Transphobia, including misgendering and deadnaming (kinda), self-harm as a motif, family conflict involving trans identity, metaphorical mild animal harm, murder fantasies, references to stalking and SA.
It is available for free on Medium here:
“Mom bought a Robo & Co android. Looks just like me, except, you know. Not trans.”
Chokechain was also published in the anthology Transcendent 4: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction.
Dead Air (2019):
This is an autobiographical piece about AJW's journey to realizing and coming to terms with being trans, how being trans feels to him, and what his relationship with his wife Alice Scott feels like.
CWs: Transphobia, including internalized, gender/body dysphoria, depression (I think), vomiting/emetophobia.
It is available for free on Medium here:
Does the world really need more trans self-discovery stories? Short answer: yes. Long answer: we need all we can get. Here’s mine.
The Foal With Two Heads (2021):
This is the short story about the young trans guy living on a ranch in a quarantine zone where everything is born with mutations and monsters roam the night. He has to deal with an unaccepting family member and ex-girlfriend, as well as with a severly deformed newborn foal that forces him to confront inner conflicts.
CWs: Transphobia including misgendering and TERF-y rethoric, body horror, toxic relationships, government neglect, surgery/medical gore, self-harm as a motif, and graphic animal harm.
The Foal With Two Heads was pulished in the body horror anthology Twisted Anatomy.
I also posted the story here, for those who can't or don't want to buy the anthology:
💬 0 🔁 6 ❤️ 6 · Okay, so for those who don't know: Besides his books, Andrew Joseph White also published five short stories. Two of them, T
The Follower, or: Psalm 127:3 (2021):
This short story is definitely to an adult audience, so if you haven't read it yet and want to check it out, keep that in mind. It's about a young trans man who has escaped his horrible, Christian fundamentalist parents and now travels with his partner, a Christian extremist serial killer who sees him as his connection to God, only for everything to get even worse when he becomes pregnant against his will.
CWs: toxic relationships, SA by an intimate partner and a family member, heavy transphobia including corrective SA and misgendering, graphic gore and murder including of children and infants, religiously motivated violence and religious extremism, forced pregnancy as violence and body horror, self-harm and suicidal ideation, actual acid, alcoholism, PTSD-flashbacks, incest, intimate partner violence, botched DIY-abortion, vomiting/emetophobia and ambiguous ending.
The Follower was published in the anthology Dark Hearts: Tales of Twisted Love, which is all about toxic and abusive relationships.
I also posted it here for everyone who can't or doesn't want to buy the anthology:
💬 3 🔁 7 ❤️ 13 · This is the second of the three Andrew Joseph White stories that aren't listed on his website and only available in anthol
The Constellations Are Unrecognizable Here (2021):
This story is about two heavily traumatised trans boys on a medical ship trying to reclaim their bodily autonomy after surviving a horrific intergalactic war and navigating their relationship.
CWs: abuse, forced marriage and SA, disregard for bodily autonomy, medical gore/horror, medical neglect and malpractice, transphobia, including misgendering and gatekeeping of gender-affirming care, body transformation, gender dysphoria, violence and war, mental health issues, including trauma, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt and self-harm.
This story is available for free on Strange Horizons here:
Pictures of me that day are kept in the ship’s files, sent back to Earth to be used in my captors’ eventual war crimes tribunals.
Who Were You, What Are You (2023):
This story is about an autistic trans boy who was almost killed by his ex-boyfriend for cheating on him (and also being trans), and now spends a weekend dogsitting with the boy he cheated with. There, he meets a strange, seemingly cis male doppelganger of himself, who offers him a way to never be afraid again.
CWs: toxic relationships, cheating, graphic intimate partner violence and attempted murder, transphobia, including misgendering and deadnaming, tumors on a dog, spooky woods and isolation, anti-autistic ableism including by parents and intimate partners and slurs, references to hate crimes, dysphoria and general fear and unease.
Who Were You, What Are You was pulished in Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology.
I also posted this story here, for all who can't or don't want to buy the anthology:
💬 5 🔁 4 ❤️ 4 · This is the last of the three Andrew Joseph White short stories that aren't listed on his website and that I'm posting here
Oathbreaker (2025):
This story is about an autistic trans boy who bonds with his very awkward dad through their ttrpg characters after his coming out went badly and his dad iced him out.
CWs: transphobia, including on a societal level as well as deadnaming and misgendering, very bad communication, unaccepting family (it ends well, don't worry), brief allusions to sexist tropes, murder, violence and gore, as well as depression and self-injurous ideation. (Most of the CWs only or mostly apply to the ttrpg world and characters.)
Oathbreaker was published in the This Is How We Roll anthology, which is all about queer kids' relationships to ttrpgs.
I also posted it here for anyone who can't or doesn't want to buy the anthology:
💬 0 🔁 2 ❤️ 3 · Oathbreaker · This is Oathbreaker, the new short story by Andrew Joseph White published in the This Is How We Roll antholog
If you wanna talk more about why any given short story is or isn't your favorite or discuss the stories with fellow AJW fans, feel free to do so in the comments!
(My personal favorite switches between Oathbreaker and The Follower, right now it's the latter.)
(Also also, my prediction is that Chokechain will turn out to be most people's fave, partially because I think it's the most read one, we'll see if I'm right.)
