Gender Queer, one of the most banned books in the U.S., is getting a deluxe edition

One of the most banned books in the United States isn't going away — it's getting a special deluxe edition.

Maia Kobabe's 2019 graphic novel Gender Queer will be re-releasing in May with brand new content. Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition includes a new cover, exclusive art and sketches, a foreword from ND Stevenson, Lumberjanes writer and creator of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and an afterword from Kobabe.

“For fans, educators, and anyone else who wants to know more, I am so excited to share Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition,” Kobabe said in a press release. “Queer and trans cartoonists, comics scholars, and multiple people who appear in the book as characters contributed their thoughts, reactions, and notes to this new edition.”

“It’s been almost seven years since I wrote the final words of this memoir; revisiting these pages today, in a radically different and less accepting political climate, sparked a lot of new thoughts for me as well,” Kobabe continued. “I hope readers enjoy this even richer text full of community voices.”

During the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts, affecting 3,752 titles. They represented the work of 2,308 authors, 243 illustrators, and 38 translators — the majority of which feature LGBTQ+ or racial themes.

Kobabe's memoir has been the most banned book in the nation for the past several years. The author told The Advocate in 2022 of the censorship, "I'm really hoping that nobody ends up self-censoring themselves and being afraid to write your authentic true voice, or the story that you have burning inside you, for fear of being challenged later on down the line."

"You are the foremost expert of your own identity," Kobabe said. "And whether you are questioning gender or sexuality, maybe some other facet of yourself, or none of those things, you know who you are, and you are the one who has lived your own interior experience. Don't let other people make you question yourself too much."