Hello and welcome to GayYA’s 2016 Pride Month + 5th Anniversary blogathon! We’re so thrilled for our upcoming month of posts!
For our 2015 blogathon intro we said that GayYA has many goals, but everything we do essentially comes down to one purpose: get more LGBTQIA+ YA published. That’s still true, but now that we have a good selection of LGBTQIA+ out there (and more on the 2017 horizon!) we believe it’s important to look beyond simply getting more published– we need to ensure that these books are getting into the hands of teens that need them, and that these books are actually what teens need. The theme for our 2016 blogathon is uncovering the areas of LGBTQIA+ YA that still need work. We’re hoping to look at these areas from perspectives we don’t usually hear, and start discussions about how to proceed. To do that, we’re featuring posts from authors, librarians, editors, agents, publicists, teen readers, and more, for the entire month of June.
We’ve got a great selection of posts and range of topics! For example, Anna-Marie Mclemore is talking about the intersection of race and sexuality and her journey to writing sex on the page, editor Andrew Karre shares one of the reasons he’s excited to see more LGBTQIA+ writers, and young adult Booktuber Adriana explains what they want to see more of in LGBTQIA+ YA.
(We’ll also be hosting some fab Twit Chats, giveaways, and challenges… more on those, later!)
We hope to use this opportunity to spread the love far and wide for LGBTQIA+ YA, uncover the areas in which more work still needs to be done, and start discussions about what to do in those areas! We so look forward to sharing these posts with you. If you’re feeling them, we’d love to have your help in promoting your favorite posts in this blogathon to your own networks! Spreadin’ the love far and wide, y’all. 🙂
Stay tuned for our first post….
