When Queer Books Lead to Queer BFFs

by Kelly Quindlen

Three years ago, when I was going through a rough patch, my parents gave me some advice. “We think you need queer friends,” my dad said. “Have you considered a gay cruise?”

I laughed out loud when he suggested it, but I knew the larger point was true: I was starving for friends who reflected my queerness back to me. I have some amazing friends, but they are overwhelmingly straight and cis. This is not their fault. We can’t all be blessed with queerness. But the point is, I had no one to confide in who would simply get it because they were living it. I was anemic in this part of my life. Gay-nemic, I guess you could say. 

It’s not that I hadn’t tried. I’d gone to gay bars, Pride parades, even a church that was LGBT-inclusive. I hung out with other queer people in these spaces, but I felt like I had to contort myself to make it work. I’m not into going out and partying. I’m not into glitter bombs at Pride. Those things are wonderful, but they’re not me. I’m a stay-home-and-read kind of gay. My queer oxygen comes from stories. 

So it only makes sense that I finally, finally found my queer best friends through books. 

Adrienne came into my life through Twitter. She DM’d me to express how much she liked my first book, and we built a slow, steady friendship around reading and writing. We traded book recs. We swapped WIPs. We signed with literary agents within a few months of each other and emailed about it immediately. But it was always a loose, colleague-like friendship. We knew bits and pieces of each other’s lives, but mostly we compared notes about the industry.

Then, last summer, I gay-writer-friend-proposed: Did she want to be a PitchWars mentor with me? 

Adrienne said yes. We built a wish list around queerness and queerness and more queerness, with a bit of mental health thrown in (because if you’re not grappling with anxiety and depression, are you truly even A Gay?). We texted and emailed more than usual. We got very, very excited for PitchWars submissions to open up.

Then, on the day we received our 81 mentee submissions, I impulsively called her on the phone. I was too damn excited to wait for texts. Adrienne picked up and we heard each other’s voices for the first time. And we squealed. Adrienne mentioned that her fiancée, Katie, was in the background, laughing in amusement. I had never had a female-identifying friend with a fiancée—two e’s—before! I was so, so happy. 

It got even better. Of all the submissions we read, there was one that jumped out at us. The author was a queer girl I’d stumbled across on Twitter because she’d written a beautiful, poignant essay about her interfaith, interracial, totally fucking queer New Hampshire wedding. Her manuscript—about a queer girl grappling with depression at the literal end of the world—grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go. Adrienne felt the same way. We knew we had to work with her. 

On the night we finally spoke with Jen on the phone, it was like magic swirled around my apartment. We talked for hours. About Jen’s manuscript, Adrienne’s book, my book, coming out, kissing women for the first time, Jen’s wedding, Adrienne’s upcoming wedding, my then-relationship, past break-ups, mental health struggles, and how our queerness was a through-line beneath all of these things. Talking to them felt like home.

A few weeks later, I traveled to Chicago for a previously-planned visit with my sister. The Gay Goddess obviously had a hand in that plan, because Chicago just happens to be where Jen and her wife, Krupa, live. We met at a Mexican restaurant with a big group of my sister’s friends and drank margaritas at the far end of the table, the only three queer people present. It was like being in our own world. It was perfect. Two weeks later, I flew to New York to meet Adrienne for the first time. The occasion? Her fabulous, sapphic-AF wedding. Our first hug was at a bar in Brooklyn the night before she said I Do. We squealed just like we had on the phone the first time. She introduced me to her fiancée, Katie, and her mom and family. We drank whiskey because of course we did. 

The next day, I went to my first queer wedding: Adrienne and Katie’s. They held it at Ssam Bar in the East Village. I took my cousin as my date, and she cried her straight little heart out during the vows. Adrienne’s opening line was, “Before I met Katie, I drank vodka.” My heart swelled because this was my friend and she was so funny and so smart and she was marrying another beautiful woman and she invited me to witness it. By the end of the night, my cheeks hurt from smiling. It was one of the best weddings I’ve ever been to. 

It’s been six months since that night at Ssam Bar, and the world looks a lot different, but our friendship is one of the touchstones getting me through. We conquered PitchWars and Jen signed with her perfect-fit agent. Adrienne and I sent her a custom T-shirt with her characters’ names listed down the front. We knew she had received it when she texted us with, “I’m going to kill you two.” Together, the three of us have finished manuscripts, traded manuscripts, and sold manuscripts. We’ve texted dozens of book recommendations. We’ve FaceTimed late at night to make sense of my breakup, but also to laugh our asses off and share “happy hour” from hundreds of miles away. 

In April, my traditional debut, Late to the Party, released. People in book world talk a lot about debut anxiety, but for me it manifested differently: I spent a huge portion of 2018 and 2019 worrying that, as I entered the book industry, I would never find the kinds of writer friends I needed by my side. I literally wrote a prayer in my journal asking for one or two good writing friends with whom I could share my authentic, vulnerable, imperfect self. 

The prayer obviously worked…and then some. Through Adrienne, there was Kiki; through Jen, Jasmyne. And now there’s Meryl and Leah and Adiba and Ray. Every day, there are more and more of us bringing our queer books into the world. So even though I can’t go to any in-person Pride celebrations this year, I am happier and more confident in my queerness than ever, because I finally feel like I’m part of a community. Books did that. Stories did that. Queer stories did that. We’re just getting started.

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Kelly Quindlen is the author of the young adult novels Late to the Party and Her Name in the Sky. A graduate of Vanderbilt University and a former teacher, Kelly has had the joy of speaking to PFLAG groups and high school GSAs. She currently serves on the leadership board of a non-profit for Catholic parents with LGBT children. She lives in Atlanta. Follow her on Twitter @kellyquindlen.