Q: Which is worse, being called a ’nigger’ or a ‘faggot’? 1. Rehearsal was late that night, 10 pm on a Saturday night in Georgetown. I had only one line in the play, but I didn’t care. It was fun to see the play come together, the actors, and the scenery and the special effects. Prospero and Caliban and Ariel came to life on that haunted island now inhabiting the school auditorium. The sodium yellow lights spilled onto the night-time scape of Georgetown at night, its red brick sidewalks, and antique shops.  I went to the bus stop [...]

I am often asked where I get my ideas for my books. I am not Stephenie Meyer; as lovely as it would be, I do not have dreams that direct my writing, word for word. For me, Fighting Gravity was a response to several social phenomena surrounding my life. It was a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to protect the young people in my bubble of the world and wanting to show others the vast rainbow of diversity in their worlds: high schools, relationships, families. The novel became my personal handbook to compassion. I wanted it to be honest, [...]

By: Sarah Deimer I'm twenty, at a party with people mostly older than me.  Everyone's drinking around the bonfire, and I'm sipping my glass of water, talking and laughing, mostly about ridiculous, nerdy things.  It's the beginning of summer, the scent of wood and smoke in the air, the insects buzzing a melody. "I've gotta talk with you..." says one of my friends, her hand at my elbow.  She leads me away from the fire, beer sloshing out of her plastic cup.  "I've been thinking a lot about it.  You," she says, waving her hand over me under [...]

Originally published on Loup Dargent as "QUILTBAG Protagonists in SF/F YA literature." Reposted on YAtopia, March 16, 2013. There is a lack of diversity in young adult fiction especially when it comes to QUILTBAG characters having the starring role in genre fiction. For those unsure, QUILTBAG stands for queer, unisex, intersex, lesbian, trans, bi, asexual and gay - a handy acronym to encompass various sexualities. The only one missing is the fairly new, pansexual, denoting a lack of preference or an all inclusive sexual preference. Science fiction and fantasy, as both a literary and movie/TV genre, has been [...]

I'm awkward and it's something I've accepted I will never grow out of. In fact, it seems to have worsened with time. Looking back on the years I spent as a teenager with body issues and a twisting tornado of sexual confusion chasing my every thought, I wish I could go back and give my teen self a hug, point to some recent events and explain how at least my teen self hasn't gone through this yet. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm better on paper. In person, I'm a sweaty mess of stumbling [...]

Imagine you’re a seventeen-year-old cowgirl living on an isolated cattle ranch in Montana, being raised by your father, a redneck Texan who thinks gays and lesbians are, “unnatural and disgustin’.” Imagine your mother abandoned you when you were twelve and the only sex education your father provided was, “You’ve seen the critters go at it. Figure it out from there.” Imagine that what you want most in life is your father’s love and approval. Imagine you discover you’re gay.   In my paranormal thriller, Threshold, the pieces of seventeen-year-old Leah Dillon’s confused sexuality fall into place during an [...]

(Editor's Note: Kelly York is the author of HUSHED. Check out our review of it here.) When I first started writing HUSHED, up until the point I started querying it to agents, I thought nothing except: “This is the story I want to tell.” Not once did I wonder what kind of reaction I might get to having written a male/male pairing. Even when it did dawn on me that some agents might not be into that, I wasn’t worried about that in particular. It had more to do with, “I’ve written a male/male pairing...and I’m not a [...]

To most people, I'm a pretty typical girl who likes girl things, who has been with a guy for 12 years. Simple, uncontroversial. Few people probably realize I've ever felt ashamed or confused about gender or sexuality. But as I sat down to write this post, I realized that in fact, I've dealt with layers of confusion about it as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time pretending to be a boy. Mind you, it was in the context of pretend games, elaborate pretend games with my friends [...]

That’s the choice that both the straight and the gay community often gives us. Pick your team. You’re either one of “us” or one of “them.” But what if you’re attracted to both genders? And the fact is that most people are… bisexual. Of course you’d never know it from news reports. The media hardly ever mentions bisexuality. And yet numerous studies, beginning with those of the groundbreaking sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey over a half-century ago, have documented that the vast majority of us aren’t either 100% exclusively heterosexual or 100% homosexual. Instead, most of us are or [...]