Sara Zarr is the author of Story of a Girl and the forthcoming How To Save A Life. You can visit her online at her website. A couple of years ago, I was speaking to a bunch of young readers at a book festival, and during the Q&A, one girl shot up her hand and asked, “Why did you decide to make Michael gay?” The question caught me off guard. Michael is an adult character in my first novel, STORY OF A GIRL. He runs the pizza dive where the main character, Deanna, has a summer job. On [...]

by Gillian Chisom Almost two years ago, I was sitting in a bookstore café working on my embryonic vampire novel. Its premise, at that point, went something like this: 20-year-old Eric has a great life: budding career as a pianist, fiancée with whom he’s madly in love, etc. All of this changes when vampire Gregory waylays Eric on his way home from a rehearsal one night and turns him into a vampire. Eric struggles to adjust to his new life. Meanwhile, he and Gregory develop an intense, complicated relationship which includes some romantic tension, but that never develops [...]

I just released my debut novel, The Dark Wife, which comes out of the closet immediately when I tell you what it's about: a YA, lesbian retelling of the Persephone/Hades myth. When sharing my happiness for the book release, I get the shifting from foot to foot, the nervous tapping of the fingers together, and--if they're brave--the person will ask me the following question: "Can straight people read it?" To which I respond, yes, straight people absolutely need to read it. Not just my book, or maybe not even my book--but straight people need to read gay books. [...]

We're starting a series of weekend giveaways, with great books featuring LGBTQ characters or authors! We'll be posting Twitter polls to determine what we give away, so keep watching our feed to make sure we're picking your favorite books. First Up: Ink Exchange(print) and Old Habits (eBook) by Melissa Marr, featuring the m/m couple Niall and Irial. On Ink Exchange: "Unbeknownst to mortals, a power struggle is unfolding in a world of shadows and danger. After centuries of stability, the balance among the Faery Court has altered, and Irial, ruler of the Dark Court, is battling to hold [...]

The coming out story represents probably the largest portion of stories in LGBTQ young adult literature. It’s an important topic, to be sure, in part because trying to figure out who we are and who we want is a major part of adolescence, and Nick Burd’s novel is one of the best of the genre. The Vast Fields of Ordinary takes place during the summer of Dade Hamilton’s last summer before college. Things aren’t looking great. His parents’ marriage is failing, his closeted jock boyfriend Pablo treats him like crap and he has a soul-killing at a grocery [...]

Today's featured author is Robin Talley, who writes here on Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series. While the Harry Potter series was still being released, I kept crossing my fingers one of the kids would turn out to be gay. It didn’t seem that far-fetched an idea. After all, the series was otherwise doing a great job of representing diverse characters. But more importantly, when I was reading the books for the first time, I was in my early 20s, and I was still getting used to the idea that this whole being-gay thing might indeed be a [...]

Sometimes I wonder why I started questioning my sexuality. If it was because my father called me a dike when I told him I preferred stud earrings to hoops; or the few years my mother was half convinced I liked girls because my best friend was bisexual; or if it was when my doctor asked my sexual orientation and I hesitated. But then, maybe it was because I actually liked a girl. Before then, my sexuality wasn’t in question. I had no interest in my sex.  So I wore my stud earrings, spent every day with my bisexual [...]

In 1778, a community in Massachusetts incorporated itself into a town called Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin. Seven years later, the leaders of Franklin, Massachusetts contacted their namesake. Pointing out how they had honored him, they asked if he would buy a bell for their meeting house. Instead, Benjamin Franklin sent a crate of 116 books from his personal collection and asked them to build a library instead, "Sense being preferable to sound." The town leaders took his advice and created the first public library in America. It's still open, with Benjamin Franklin's original 116 books on display. America [...]

To some people, I guess it'd be a mystery as to why I would choose to come out as a bisexual for the first time here and now. (God, writing this is so scary. Bear with me!) It took me a couple of days to figure it out myself. Sure, I've told my husband, and my best friend, and my mother during one especially passionate screaming match. But I never really felt the need to bring it to attention before, so I just treated it like some intensely private thing. I'm a happily married, twenty-three year old woman [...]

Ellen Wittlinger is the author of Hard Love, Parrotfish, and many other novels for young adults. She can be found online at her website. In 1997 when I began writing the novel Hard Love, most (if not all) of the YA novels with GLBT characters dealt with the process and difficulties of coming out. But when I looked around it seemed to me that there were a lot of teens for whom coming out was no longer such a big deal—they were past that stage already. I thought it was important to look at the question, “What comes [...]