Author Guest Blog – Page 13

Taking the Homophobia Out of Fantasy

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:43:20-05:00April 19th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Fantasy|

Malinda Lo's first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Huntress, was just published in April 2011 and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Visit her website at www.malindalo.com. In my two young adult fantasy novels, Ash and Huntress, the main characters are girls who fall in love with other girls. I admit there's something different about the love stories told in my books, but it's not that they're [...]

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Guest Post: Jo Knowles

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:43:21-05:00April 8th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Advocacy, censorship, Representation|

Last weekend I was driving near the Brown campus in Providence, RI with my family. When we stopped at a light, two male students crossed the street, holding hands. They were chatting away, smiling, like what they were doing was the most natural thing in the world. My husband and I both commented on how nice that was. And how rare. Because honestly? In most places in this country, you will not see two boys walking along a busy street holding hands. Carefree. Safe. In most places in this country, there are still boys and girls just like [...]

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Teen Novels: Once Again, a Decade Ahead of Television

By Maria|2016-05-24T14:54:17-05:00April 7th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: History of Queer YA, Representation|

Brent Hartinger is an author, screenwriter, and playwright. He can be found on Twitter as @BrentHartinger I've been saying for years that if you want to know what's going to be on television in five or ten years, look at what's happening in books today. Like clockwork, we authors always predict exactly where the mass culture is heading. Okay, so maybe we didn't predict the outrageous, depressing mess that so much of reality television has become. We authors tend to predict the things that appeal to, um, slightly higher aspects of human nature. Take the whole issue of [...]

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Being a Straight Ally

By admin|2020-03-28T13:43:21-05:00April 5th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Allies, Bisexual|

Chandra Rooney has threatened to stop watching Glee if Kurt and Blaine break up. She sporadically updates her personal blog (Dreaming in Red,) and you can follow her on twitter as @sakuralovestea. If you had asked teen me to name LGBTQ characters and canon pairings in YA lit, most of them would’ve come from Asian comics. The novels I remember reading as a teen—LJ Smith, Christopher Pike, RL Stine—were all hetro couples; manga was where to find the variety. It was probably Cardcaptor Sakura that I most connected with; CLAMP had written a story reflecting the relationships [...]

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THE SHOCK OF RECOGNITION

By admin|2020-03-28T13:43:24-05:00April 4th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Representation|

I think my greatest hope as a writer is that I’ll resonate with someone. Not everyone. I think it’s impossible to write something that resonates with everyone. But even if just one person reads something I wrote and can empathize with a character or a situation, I’ve done what I set out to do. When writing succeeds, it’s because of resonance. The writer holds up a mirror and gives us the shock of recognition. Sometimes we relate to a character’s aspirations. Sometimes we just understand their hardships. I’m not sure I believe in universal truths but I definitely [...]

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Old Dog, New Tricks

By admin|2020-03-28T13:43:24-05:00April 2nd, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: censorship|

Originally posted at Making Stuff Up For A Living. Thanks to Saundra for allowing us to repost! By: Saundra Mitchell When sister Deb Jessica Verday told us that her editor for WICKED PRETTY THINGS insisted that the G-rated, one-kiss gay romance in her story had to become a het romance to be published, I was appalled, but not surprised. I came out in 1989, and as a YA author, I try not to spend a lot of time pointing out how much older I am than my audience. But even though 1989 seems recent to me, it’s more than two [...]

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