YA Pride

Stonewall Book Award – 2015 Winners

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:42:07-05:00February 3rd, 2015|Categories: Archive|Tags: Middle Grade, Queer Girls, Queer Guys, Trans|

Each year the American Library Association (ALA) announces the Youth Media Awards given to outstanding children and young adult books (including audiobooks, videos and graphic novels). This year the awards were presented on Monday Feb 1st, in a ceremony in Chicago, USA. One of the awards presented was the Stonewall Book Award, which is granted to "English language books that have exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience" (via ALA's website). This year the books recognized were: Stonewall Book Award -Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award WINNER This Day in June (Magination Press, 2014) “This [...]

Comments Off

February Book Club: The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun Hutchinson

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:07-05:00February 3rd, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Club|

In February, we’ll be reading The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun Hutchinson! The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley (Simon Pulse, 2015) Andrew Brawley was supposed to die that night. His parents did, and so did his sister, but he survived. Now he lives in the hospital. He serves food in the cafeteria, he hangs out with the nurses, and he sleeps in a forgotten supply closet. Drew blends in to near invisibility, hiding from his past, his guilt, and those who are trying to find him. Then one night Rusty is wheeled into the [...]

Comments Off

Author Guest Post: Love, War, and Fairy Tale Endings

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:08-05:00January 27th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, New Releases|Tags: gay, Historical, New Releases, Queer Guys|

by Danny M. Cohen Early on in my debut novel, Train, teenagers Alexander and Marko make their way through the midnight shadows of Berlin to The Fountain of Fairy Tales in Friedrichshain Park. Statues of Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel, Gretel, and other familiar storybook characters surround the fountain and watch the teenage boys share a kiss. But this is no fairy tale. This is 1943 Germany and the Nazi machinery of deportation and mass-murder is ongoing. In writing Train, I wanted to tell the hidden stories of Hitler’s often forgotten victims—the Roma, the disabled, homosexuals, political [...]

Comments Off

Author Interview: Danny M. Cohen

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:42:08-05:00January 27th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Interview|Tags: gay, Historical, New Releases, Queer Guys, Realistic|

Today we are talking with author Danny M. Cohen about his debut novel, TRAIN, which comes out today! Happy release day Danny! Train by Danny M. Cohen (Unsilence Project , 2015) About the book: TRAIN is a YA historical thriller with a particular focus on the Nazis’ persecution of homosexuals. This novel is self-published in partnership with Unsilence Project. “This thriller gives voice to the unheard victims of Nazism — the Roma, the disabled, homosexuals, intermarried Jews, and political enemies of the regime.” (via Danny Cohen's website) Over ten days in 1943 Berlin, six teenagers witness [...]

Comments Off

Call For Guest Bloggers

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:08-05:00January 24th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Updates and Announcements|

Welcome to our first monthly call for guest bloggers! Each month we will put up a list of topics, prompt questions, or specific kinds of people we're looking for submissions on/from. For this first call, we want to hear from some teens, twenty-somethings, authors, agents, and editors. We're interested in co-written posts as well, so if you want to grab a friend or colleague to write with you about one of these, that would be great! We're also interested in interviews. Below are some prompt questions about specific things we're really interested in hearing about. Your post can touch on [...]

Comments Off

Review: Remember Me by Melanie Batchelor

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:08-05:00January 23rd, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Review, Teen Voices|Tags: Poetry, Queer Girls|

Melanie Batchelor was fourteen years old when she wrote the subject of this month’s review, Remember Me. Had I not known that, I would’ve filled this review with a thousand praises for her nuanced, accurate characterizations and deceptively simple poems that create a gripping, compelling read. Remember Me by Melanie Batchelor (Bold Strokes Books, 2014) Since I am aware of the fact that Batchelor is, in fact, deeply precocious, and possibly one of the most promising young writers of this generation, I will instead fill this review with a thousand praises for her nuanced, accurate characterizations [...]

1

Gay YA: a personal retrospective

By Nathaniel|2020-03-28T13:42:18-05:00January 14th, 2015|Categories: Archive|Tags: LGBTQIA, Representation|

How They Met and Other Stories (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2008) The first gay YA I picked up, in early 2009, was David Levithan’s short story collection How They Met, and Other Stories, recommended to me by someone on tumblr. The first story in the collection, “Starbucks Boy”, radically changed the way I thought about myself. My interest in guys, to that point, had been mostly theoretical. I knew I liked them, theoretically and I knew there were some attractive ones at school with me, but only towards the end of 2008 did the idea [...]

Comments Off

Review: Stranger by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:18-05:00January 13th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Review, Teen Voices|Tags: Aromantic, asexual, Black, gay, Latin@, PoC, Polyamory, Queer Girls, Queer Guys, Trauma|

Stranger (Viking Juveline, 2014) Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change,” arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town… where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of [...]

Comments Off

New Releases: January 2015

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:42:19-05:00January 12th, 2015|Categories: Archive, New Releases|Tags: asexual, Bisexual, gay, lesbian, New Releases, Queer Girls, Queer Guys, Trans|

JANUARY 1ST (UK) The Art of Being Normal (David Fickling Books, 2015) The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson -- (TRANS) Goodreads Summary: "Two boys. Two secrets. David Piper has always been an outsider. His parents think he’s gay. The school bully thinks he’s a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth – David wants to be a girl. On the first day at his new school Leo Denton has one goal – to be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in year eleven is definitely not part of that plan. When [...]

1

Review: Lies my Girlfriend Told Me by Julie Anne Peters

By Georgie|2020-03-28T13:42:19-05:00January 11th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Review|Tags: lesbian, Queer Girls, Realistic|

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me (Little Brown Books, 2014) I bought this on a whim because it showed up on the ‘What other customers bought’ section of my Amazon page, which made no sense at all the book I was looking at just then was a totally unrelated YA horror. Amazon clearly has some issues with its recommendation system, then, but it’s all good: after finding this book I was very grateful that they’d plagued me on that particular day. The book opens when Alix’s parents come into her room and tell her that her girlfriend, [...]

1