YA Pride

No Dumbledores Need Apply

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:47-05:00May 18th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Editors, Representation|

Hey! We mixed up our links today, 5/20/15. If you're looking for the post on what teens on tumblr are saying or about the call for diversity and having limited spaces to call home, check out Tumblr Teens: BookMad For Diversity. If you want an editor's perspective on why he's going to stop using the phrase "just happens to be gay" and what he's looking for in queer YA, read on! by T.S. Ferguson You may be aware of a conversation that happened in April focusing on the phrase “just happens to be gay.” The conversation was started by [...]

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Making Choices in LGBTQ YA

By Marilla|2020-03-28T13:41:47-05:00May 18th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Bisexual, lesbian, LGBTQIA, Queer Girls|

by Dahlia Adler I've spoken a lot about how Under the Lights wasn't originally a f/f romance. I had always planned to write one, but my very first was going to be the YA I'm actually drafting now, which is a contemporary inspired by the historical War of the Roses. (It's still f/f - not to worry!) But when I was drafting UtL, I really, really struggled with the romance I was writing for Vanessa with this boy, and why there was zero story and zero chemistry. I was talking to one of my critique partners about it, and I [...]

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Labels are for Soup Cans (and also for me)

By Nita|2020-03-28T13:41:47-05:00May 17th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: asexual, Representation|

by Nita Tyndall I was twelve the first time I realized I was queer. Back then, I identified as bisexual. Although I didn’t think I was a lesbian (even though I’d never felt attracted to boys), I wanted to keep my options open. And when I was twelve, those were the only two words I knew—lesbian and bisexual, though neither of them felt right. Gay didn’t, either, because I’d always associated that word with gay men, and I wasn’t one of those. So from twelve to thirteen, I was bisexual. When I was in high school and started [...]

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Graphic Novel Review: Lumberjanes.

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 16th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Review|Tags: Fantasy, graphic novel, Intersectionality, LGBTQIA, Middle Grade, PoC, Queer Girls|

Lumberjanes (Boom! Studios, 2014) One of the biggest challenges I face when reading, reviewing and now, publishing, is to find balance in the types of queers stories I read/review/publish. It often feels to me that the vast majority of what is out there - and what is made more visible when it comes to reviewing and award-winning - are the stories that deal with violence, homophobia, or the ones where being queer is the story. Don’t get me wrong, because those? Are super important and should be told, read and talked about. But equally important in [...]

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We’re All Bending Reality

By Olivia|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 15th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: gay, Queer Guys, Representation, Speculative|

By Alex London As a closeted teenager, thinking about any kind of future for myself was an act of speculative fiction. I attended a conservative all-boys prep school, a place where, at the time, athletes were kings and heroes and there was only one way to be a man. Any deviation from that way was seen as a personal failing. And I was failing. I had deviant desires and strange daydreams. I was different. I also had no gay role models and no books with gay characters to look to. Without any external guidance to look to, my [...]

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Book Review: None Of The Above by I.W. Gregorio

By Kale|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 14th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Club, Book Review|Tags: Intersex|

by Alexandra von Klan from Inter/Act Youth None of the Above is GayYA's book of the month. Grab a copy now and get ready to discuss later this month in our book club twit chat! None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio (Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins, 2015) Within the vast realm of young adult novels, I’m an amateur reader. I’ve yet to devour the Hunger Games trilogy and, up until a week ago, I had zero point of reference to John Green (although, after looking him up, I sobbed during the trailer for [...]

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I’ve got a girl in the war

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 13th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: asexual, Non Binary, Representation|

by Marieke Nijkamp “The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children the dragons can be killed.” With these words, the late, great Terry Pratchett famously misquotes G.K. Chesterton’s Tremendous Trifles. It’s not a misrepresentation of Chesterton’s ideas though. For Chesterton, too, stories were St. Georges, dragonslayers. But I’d like to think it goes further than that. Stories tell readers dragons come in many ways and many forms—from false friends to overwhelming dystopias. Stories do not just tell readers dragons can be [...]

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M.E. Kerr and Deliver Us from Evie

By Helen|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 12th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Book Review, Guest Blogs|Tags: classics, Queer Girls|

by Sara Zarr I knew about M.E. Kerr long before I read her. When I was growing up in the seventies and making regular visits to our neighborhood library, there was a beat-up paperback on the spinning rack of “teen fiction” that caught my eye: Dinky Hockey Shoots Smack by M.E. Kerr (HarperCollins Publishers, 1989) DINKY HOCKER SHOOTS SMACK! How could I not notice a title like that? The cover image had the title spray-painted across a brick wall like graffiti. At age nine or ten I made a mental note to myself to read that [...]

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How To Make Your Library a Safe Place for Queer Teens

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 11th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Advocacy, Allies, Library|

by Angie Manfredi Last year, I chose Alex London’s YA dystopian thriller Proxy as my teen book club’s selection. This meant my library would purchase multiple copies, many teens would read it, and then we would Skype with Alex to talk about it. Why did I choose Proxy? Well, partially because it’s superb YA: a well-written, engaging, fast-paced read that asks interesting questions about debt and income inequality. But I also partially chose it because it has a gay, biracial lead character and the author is a gay man. I wanted my teen readers to experience a swashbuckling [...]

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Are They LGBTQIA? Let Your Characters Tell You

By Helen|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 10th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Allies, LGBTQIA, Minor Queer Characters|

by Karen Sandler As a cis white author who’s inching ever closer to old lady status, I experienced a couple fortunate circumstances in my youth that shaped me as a writer. First, when I transferred to a new high school in 1970, the circle of friends who drew me in were largely gay, lesbian, and transgender. Second, when I started writing more seriously in my early 20s, several of the members of my critique group—which included luminaries Katherine Forrest and Montserrat Fontes—were gay or lesbian. I don’t mention this to brag that I’m “all that and more” or [...]

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