Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series: Day 8 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series – The Excitement and Frustration of Being “Alone” – Actual Love – Being Surrounded by Something You’ve Never Quite Understood – On Writing Aromantic Characters in YA – Discovering Aromanticism – Broken, Villains, or Punishment - On Aromantic Visibility in YA by Ren Oliveira If you asked me to summarize what it felt like growing up as an aromantic person, a single memory would come to my mind immediately: my friends talking about boys and crushes and romance while I sat [...]

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series: Day 7 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series – The Excitement and Frustration of Being “Alone” – Actual Love – Being Surrounded by Something You’ve Never Quite Understood – On Writing Aromantic Characters in YA – Discovering Aromanticism - Broken, Villains, or Punishment by Laya It seems these days that almost every single YA book needs to have a romantic subplot, and it’s rather exhausting. Especially when so many of them are straight/white/cis. I’m not saying romance in fiction is bad – portrayals of all kinds of romantic relationships [...]

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series: Day 6 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series – The Excitement and Frustration of Being “Alone” – Actual Love – Being Surrounded by Something You’ve Never Quite Understood – On Writing Aromantic Characters in YA - Discovering Aromanticism by Fox Salazar I remember being a young teen and a voracious reader. I read almost anything. Old classics like Lovecraft, modern realistic fiction authors like Julie Anne Peters, and too many books with dragons to name. But I hated the romance genre. In fact, I didn’t really like reading romances [...]

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series: Day 2 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series – The Excitement and Frustration of Being “Alone” by Ashley D. Wallis I thought I was broken. These are words I’ve heard time and time again in my inbox or on posts explaining aromanticism. For over a decade, I thought the same thing. Two years ago, I was twenty-nine years old and scrolling through tumblr when I came across a post describing aro people. I’d seen many posts about asexuality, and often thought that the description was how I felt – [...]