During Bisexual Awareness Week, we want to use our space on GayYA to support bi, pan, and polysexual/romantic voices. Last year, we decided to host Awareness Week Series over the various LGBTQIA+ Awareness Weeks throughout the year. Though we hope to include everyone on the site at all times, we wanted to dedicate a concentrated space to people from a specific community to talk about how they’re represented in YA. The response from the community was phenomenal– we got to feature many fantastic and thought-provoking posts, and watched as the community fostered some nuanced discussions via our identity-centric Twit Chats. I personally remember feeling amazed as I read the posts that were sent in and scrolled through the Twit Chat hashtag. I realized I wasn’t alone in my feelings of discontent regarding the representation of my identities, or my hopes for what that representation could look like in the future. I got to meet and connect with so many smart and passionate people.

So of course, we had to do the Awareness Week Series again this year.

During the 2016 Bisexual Awareness Week, we’ll feature 3-5 posts from various bi/pan/poly contributors over the course of the week, and dedicate a space to talk about bi, pan, and poly representation in YA.

Interested in contributing? Here are the details:

Posts should be between 800-2500 words, and center around bi/pan/poly representation in YA. Your posts may go through light edits or a collaborative workshopping process.

Send your post as a Word doc to vee@gayya.org. Please include a 2-5 sentence bio about yourself including links to your blog, Twitter, website, or tumblr. Any links you’d like to use should be included as hyperlinks in the post. If you’d like to include a headshot or other images please attach them to the email– do not embed images in the document!

We do not offer monetary compensation of any sort, but are usually happy to help you out in other ways if we can. Just ask!

The deadline for submitting a post is September 12th. We’ll let you know by the 17th if we’ve selected your post for the series.

A Few Words of Advice:

We will consider any topic that is related to LGBTQIA+ YA, however please be aware that we try to avoid repeating similar takes on identical topics. The more specific you can be, the more likely we are to accept your submission. In particular, we are more likely to accept topics that weren’t featured in last year’s Bisexual Awareness Week Series: http://www.yapride.org/?p=3031 That said, if you’d like to build on a topic covered by a previous contributor, or offer a differing opinion on a similar issue, we will happily consider your post.

Email vee@gayya.org with any questions. We look forward to reading your submissions!