YA Pride

Interview with Tess Sharpe

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00May 15th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Author Interview, Book Club|Tags: Bisexual|

Tess Sharpe is the author of Gay YA's May Book of the Month Far From You-- which has quickly found a place on my Favorites shelf. This book features a bisexual and disabled protagonist, and I found it to be incredibly moving and well-written. Join our discussion of it over on the forums and read our full review! Tess Sharpe is here today, discussing her writerly journey and her thoughts on Gay YA. This is my first interview, so I hope you all enjoy it! -Victoria Victoria: While on the path to getting published did you ever run into any [...]

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Review of FAR FROM YOU by Tess Sharpe

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00May 6th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Book Review, Teen Voices|

FAR FROM YOU is GayYA's May Book of the Month. We're giving away a signed copy to two lucky winners in our giveaway, which you can enter here, and discussing the book as we read through it together here. Later in the month, you can look forward to an interview from Tess Sharpe and a TwitChat inspired by the book. Review: FAR FROM YOU by Tess Sharpe You guys are all bookish people, so I'm sure you know (and savour) the feeling of being so wrapped up in a book that opening it feels like your very own [...]

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May Book Haul

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00May 3rd, 2014|Categories: Archive|

Hey everyone! So I'm going to be starting a new thing: book hauls! If you're unfamiliar with the term, it basically means I'm going to be slightly self-absorbed and hope you care about my very interesting thoughts on all the books I just bought. Except because I'm poor I'll probably mostly be doing library book hauls...where I talk about all the books I just checked out. So. Yay? Oh, and it'll be all (or mostly) Gay YA. Here we go! I got: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz on Audiobook I've [...]

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Review: Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00May 1st, 2014|Categories: Archive, Book Review|

Review by Alex Mccoy Craig and Harry, ex-boyfriends, are trying to break the Guinness World Record for longest kiss. Peter and Neil, who've been dating for a while, are trying to figure out whether they're too familiar with one another. Ryan and Avery have just met and are tentatively (but excitedly) starting something new. And Cooper just wants to stop being so lonely and feeling so misunderstood. In *Two Boys Kissing*, the stories of each of these boys are told from the unique perspective of a group of gay men that have lost their lives to AIDS in [...]

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Haircuts, the Media, and Free Electrons

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00April 14th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Teen Voices|Tags: LGBTQIA, Representation|

About a year ago today, I announced to my friends that I was going to be somewhat spur-of-the-moment and chop off my waist-length hair for charity. I wasn't expecting huge applause, or great concern, or really any kind of reaction that involved a lot of emotion. All I wanted was someone to come with me to get it cut, for moral support. Instead I got: "Are you sure, Georgie? I mean - won't you look a bit - lesbiany?" At the time, of course, I rolled my eyes, believing it made absolutely no difference what these girls thought. I told myself they [...]

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Stereotypes

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00April 7th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: LGBTQIA, Stereotypes|

It wasn’t long ago that you’d be hard pressed to find a YA book with a gay character in it all. We’ve come a long way. Yet there’s still a long way to go. While gay characters are represented in YA fiction, far too often they are stereotypes, there to provide an appearance of diversity without actually being fully realized characters. How often does a female YA protagonist have a quirky, funny, gay best friend? This is a great character because it’s a male presence, but one without any threat associated with him. Then there’s the sporty lesbian, another stereotype [...]

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Authenticity and the Coming Out Process

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00March 29th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: Coming Out|

AUTHOR GUEST BLOG: J. Lee Graham The coming out process, for people of all ages, always and forever will be, a transformational and sacred journey. It is not a one-time event. It is not always a giant party nor is it always a dramatic Act Three denouement. Often I see our society responding to splashy headlines of a celebrity who decides to come out and the tendency is to assume that that is all that ‘coming out’ means: a Public Relations moment that creates a five minute discussion at the supper table. [...]

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Find Us Other Places on the Internet!

By Vee|2016-05-24T14:52:13-05:00March 25th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Updates and Announcements|

We now have a Facebook page and a tumblr! Our aim is to give each social media outlet, respectively, a different angle. So there's a reason to follow us everywhere! ;)

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YA Latina Lesbians: On Mayra Lazara Dole’s Down to the Bone

By Sonia|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00January 14th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Book Review|Tags: lesbian, PoC, Queer Girls|

by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez Down to the Bone (Harper Teen & Bella Books, 2012) In Mayra Lazara Dole’s [1] Down to the Bone (2012) Laura, a Cuban-American high school junior, is forced to come-out when her Catholic school teacher reads Laura’s private texts to her girlfriend aloud to the entire class. As a result, Laura is humiliated, kicked out of school, and asked by her mother to leave their home. Dole’s description of Laura’s coming-out is significant, among many reasons, because it centers a Latina lesbian protagonist. Despite the increased awareness for the need of diverse [...]

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Industry Week Guest Blog: Anna Mickelsen

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:44-05:00June 12th, 2013|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|

I’m not a young adult librarian, but I’m a longtime reader of young adult fiction, particularly stories that feature lesbian characters. As a reader, I can confirm that we’ve come a long way since the days of having to (as recently described by Mary at Queer Books Please) scour mainstream books for some hint of queer content. My coming of age and coming out was largely done in pre-internet days, when often the best you could do was manufacture your own subtext. Although it’s still inconsistent and problematic, YA fiction is increasingly diverse. According to the book Serving [...]

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