Want Queer Representation? Try These 15 Audio Dramas!

Pride Month is almost over. Like most of us, I am sure you spent time Time to celebrate by consuming stories full of queer characters! Luckily, audio dramas, podcasts that take the form of a serialized fiction story, have you covered. This reinvigorated medium is full of queer character and creators in all sorts of genres! Here are just a few of the many great show to get you started! All of the following stories have at least one major character who is LGBTQIA+.

1. The Strange Case of Starship Iris

Via procyonpodcasts.com

In 2189, Earth narrowly won a war against extraterrestrials, but at a tremendous price. Two years later, in a distant patch of space, a mysterious explosion kills nearly the entire crew of the science vessel Starship Iris. The only survivor is Violet Liu, an intrepid, sarcastic, terrified biologist. But as Violet struggles to readjust to life after the Iris, questions abound. Was that explosion really an accident? If not, just what is going on? And why does every answer seem to get more bizarre and more dangerous? If Violet and her newfound allies want to untangle the truth, they'll need courage, brilliance, and luck - and honestly, a couple of drinks.

Queer Content: Violet Liu is bisexual and has great slow-burn romantic tension with another female crew member, whose name is technically a mild spoiler. Fellow crew member and alien linguist Brian Jeeter is a trans man.

2. Kalila Stormfire's Economical Magick Services

Via kalilastormfire.com

Glamour spell gone wrong? Astral projection got you untethered? Want to know why your angry dead rich father is haunting you? Consider Kalila Stormfire’s Economical Magick Services.

After a controversial fallout with her coven, Kalila Stormfire must juggle complex clients and an anonymous critic hellbent on besmirching her new business. The decaying urban block where Kal operates appreciates her affordable experience in a broad range of supernatural ailments and remedies. Still, Kal is not sure if her talent is enough to stop whoever has been posting bad reviews and persuading customers to cancel appointments.

Queer Content: Kalila is bisexual and there is a recurring non-binary character.

3. The Bright Sessions

Via thebrightsessions.com

The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast that follows a group of therapy patients. But these are not your typical patients - each has a unique supernatural ability. The show documents their struggles and discoveries as well as the motivations of their mysterious therapist, Dr. Bright.

Queer Content: Tons. One of the central plots involves two teen boys and their adorable love story. There is also an explicitly asexual character and a bisexual male character.

4. Love and Luck

Via loveandluckpodcast.com

Love and Luck is a fictional radio play podcast, told via voicemails. It’s a slice of life queer romance story with a touch of magic. The story is about two men who fall in love, learn they have magic powers, and use those powers to support and protect their community. The good guys win, no one gets killed, and queer people of all types are all loved and valued.

Queer content: Main characters Jason and Kane are gay witch boyfriends (Kane is also a trans man). The show also includes a supporting cast of other LGBT+ characters and regular shoutouts to real queer hotspots and cultural figures in its home setting of Melbourne, Australia.

5. The After Disaster Broadcast

Via theafterdisasterbroadcast.com

The After Disaster Broadcast is a comedic post-apocalyptic tale, this podcast follows former radio host Jo Prendergast at the explosive end of the world. Keep up with Jo’s ham radio transmissions as she uses humor and luck to survive: the effects of a supervolcano eruption, other survivors who could murder her or help her or both, existential dread, death, no longer having running water, MREs and more!

Queer Content: Jo is pretty much the definition of a disaster bi. Jee-Hyun is also queer and eventually a non-binary person joins their group.

6. Ars Paradoxica

Via arsparadoxica.com

ars PARADOXICA is a love letter to physics, fiction, and the future. It's a disorienting journey through spacetime and the Cold War. It's a tome of secret history you stumbled across in a library in the dead of night.

It's an award-winning serial audio drama.

When an experiment in a time much like our own goes horribly awry, Dr. Sally Grissom finds herself stranded in the past and entrenched in the activities of a clandestine branch of the US government. Grissom and her team quickly learn that there's no safety net when toying with the fundamental logic of the universe.

Queer content: Sally is aromantic and asexual, which comes up explicitly at several points. There is also a prominent lesbian character and several other queer characters.

7. Greater Boston

Via greaterbostonshow.com

Greater Boston is a bi-monthly full-cast audio drama set in the Boston metro area, blending the real and the unreal, the historical and the fantastical. It all begins with the death of Leon Stamatis, a man so enamored of predictability that the least hint of uncertainty makes life unbearable. But by leaving the world, he has irrevocably changed it.

Queer content: Married couple Gemma and Charlotte Linzer-Coolidge begin the show waiting on the arrival of their first child, and have since faced down a referendum to turn a subway line into a city, baked bean-based espionage and “gastromancy.” Also, there are prominent gay, asexual, bisexual, and transgender characters.

8. Tides

Via tidespodcast.com

Tides is a science fiction audio drama about life in extreme circumstances. It follows biologist Dr. Winifred Eurus, a member of the first manned expedition to Fons, an Earth-like moon wracked by extreme tidal waves due to its orbit around a nearby gas giant. When surveying ocean life her submarine is destroyed, leaving her alone to walk to higher ground before the wave comes back. Along the way, she makes notes about what she finds in the intertidal zone, and gradually realizes that some of the life there is more than what it seems.

Queer Content: While it isn't a focus, Dr. Eurus is a bisexual disaster, and some other members of the crew are also queer.

9. Alice Isn't Dead

Via nightvalepresents.com

A truck driver searches across America for the wife she had long assumed was dead. In the course of her search, she will encounter not-quite-human serial murderers, towns literally lost in time, and a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman.

Queer content: The story centers around a woman trying to find her wife, so their relationship is very central to the story.

10. The Once And Future Nerd

Via onceandfuturenerd.com

THE ONCE AND FUTURE NERD is a serialized audiodrama podcast about three teenagers from modern-day Pennsylvania who find themselves trapped in a High Fantasy world full of powerful magic and feudal intrigue. Will they survive their new surroundings long enough to get back home? Will their genre-awareness be an asset or a liability? And what is it like to be a rabbit?

Queer content: There is a very bisexual bastard queen and a prominent side plot about the romance between a noble woman and her maid, as well as many great queer side characters.

11. The Ghost Radio Project

Via ghostradioproject.com

Nearly a decade after the economic, social, and ecological crisis known as the Collapse, a small group of unauthorized radio broadcasters move together through a post-Capitalism era in the southwestern United States, clinging to one another for survival.

Together, these pirate radio broadcasters form Ghost Radio, a mobile station carried from one frequency to the next as they tear their way through the bright, arid lands of West Texas. Tune in to one of the last propaganda-free radio stations in existence. When you can find it, that is...

Queer Content: A very queer show, there are quite a few trans, bi, and gay characters.

12. Station to Station

A handful of fading memories, the remains of a research project, and a garbled tape recording are all Dr. Miranda Quan has to her name after her research partner goes missing on the eve of a 10-week ocean expedition. Now, she must try to find closure in the midst of a rapidly-unraveling conspiracy while surrounded by a handful of unlikely allies, several likely threats, and the icy waters of the North Pacific.

Station to Station is a scifi-horror audio drama about loss, memory, morality, and what gets left behind.

Queer content: Miranda’s new allies include bisexual lab assistant Nelly Cochrane and lesbian submersible vehicles technician Reva Santiago (who, in Nelly’s estimation, has some excellent arms -- and hopefully isn’t trying to murder anyone on board).

13. Violet Beach

Via violetbeach.com

Violet Beach is about seven young people who connect at a new year's party when they see the sky in the Maryland town they call home turn bright purple. sending each other audio updates on the strangeness around them, they end up revealing their vulnerabilities, their fears, and their joys in ways they typically cannot.

Queer Content: Much of Violet Beach’s main cast is queer, including fiancees Robin and Elaine, high schooler Charlotte and maybe-visitor from another dimension Mae.

14. Under Pressure

Via procyonpodcasts.com

In the wake of personal tragedy, Dr Jamie MacMillan-Barrie forgoes a future in academia is favor of an uncertain future in the form of an humanities residency aboard the Amphitrite, a deep-sea stationary research facility. On the Amphitrite, Dr MacMillan-Barrie tries to come to terms with her circumstance while facing her antipathetic hard-sciences colleagues, an unending series of minor crises both the personal and professional realm, and an increasingly hostile ocean above.

Queer Content: Dr. MacMillain-Barrie and marine biologist Dr. Mona Ramirez flirt over horrifying deep sea fish. Dr. Sidney Petersen, the ship’s medical doctor, is nonbinary.

15. The Lesbian Romantic

Via lesbianromantic.com

Lesbian romance stories brought to you as an immersive audiobook. Current Story, “Connection Concealed”: A dutiful cyber warfare officer falls in love with the charismatic rebel leader she’s supposed to bring to justice.

Queer Content: Now on its fourth story, this anthology series features romance stories centered around lesbian characters, including tech moguls, bloggers, divas and more.