YA Pride

Teen Voices: Unbroken

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00December 14th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Teen Voices|

Welcome to our new series, Teen Voices. We are inviting LGBTQ and straight teens to share their experiences with Gay YA in this weekly series. Writing my online story Henny, I try my best to explain to the reader my own life trials and triumphs in finding myself. One of the toughest experiences I had to encounter was Sexual assault. In reading Alex’s Sanchez’s “Bait” his main character lashes out against a gay classmate in dealing with his own rape by his stepfather when he was younger. Luckily, I wasn’t assaulted by a family member but it was [...]

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Author Guest Blog – Kelly York

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00December 12th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|

(Editor's Note: Kelly York is the author of HUSHED. Check out our review of it here.) When I first started writing HUSHED, up until the point I started querying it to agents, I thought nothing except: “This is the story I want to tell.” Not once did I wonder what kind of reaction I might get to having written a male/male pairing. Even when it did dawn on me that some agents might not be into that, I wasn’t worried about that in particular. It had more to do with, “I’ve written a male/male pairing...and I’m not a [...]

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Speaking into the Frost

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00December 1st, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|

I could probably list one hundred reasons why I write, but one of the most important is this: we only have so many opportunities in our lives to transform bad things into good. We only have so many opportunities to take things that are muddled and angry and difficult and shape them into things that matter. We can choose not to lie every day of our lives, but we only have so many opportunities to say things that are very, very true. So: a story. On the day after Thanksgiving several years ago, I told my mother I [...]

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Being Queer Friendly in Your Library

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00November 3rd, 2011|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|

Guest Post by Suzie Day http://cataloguethisblog.blogspot.com/ Not long ago, I asked a room full of about 30 queer youth, most in their early twenties, to raise their hand if they were bullied at school. Almost everyone did. I then asked those who had been bullied if they had taken refuge in their school library. About 75% of the room raised their hand. For LGBTQ youth, school can be one of the most dangerous places to be, with 89% of queer youth in Australia reporting that they had been harassed on school grounds (Hillier, Turner, & Mitchell, 2007). [...]

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Review: HUSHED

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00October 29th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Book Review|

Hushed by Kelley York Young Adult Contemp Thriller (upper YA, dark) Entangled Publishing *Advance reader copy provided by the publisher. This in no way affected my review of the material. He’s saved her. He’s loved her. He’s killed for her. Eighteen-year-old Archer couldn’t protect his best friend, Vivian, from what happened when they were kids, so he’s never stopped trying to protect her from everything else. It doesn’t matter that Vivian only uses him when hopping from one toxic relationship to another—Archer is always there, waiting to be noticed. Then along comes Evan, the only person [...]

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Guest Post by Jackie Dolamore

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00October 21st, 2011|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|

To most people, I'm a pretty typical girl who likes girl things, who has been with a guy for 12 years. Simple, uncontroversial. Few people probably realize I've ever felt ashamed or confused about gender or sexuality. But as I sat down to write this post, I realized that in fact, I've dealt with layers of confusion about it as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time pretending to be a boy. Mind you, it was in the context of pretend games, elaborate pretend games with my friends [...]

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Caribbean Life of a Gay Teenager

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00September 3rd, 2011|Categories: Archive, Teen Voices|

We asked Aju to talk to us about the experience of growing up gay in the Caribbean. If you would like to share the LGBTQ teen experience in your country, please email maria@gayya.org We'd love to hear from you! Moving back to Trinidad and Tobago I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into. Honestly, I had a false sense of hope that maybe things wouldn’t have changed so drastically… And it was Tobago I was heading for. It was much smaller and slower than the more industrialized Trinidad. The majority of the people grew up with their [...]

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Review: Witch Eyes

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00September 2nd, 2011|Categories: Archive, Book Review|

Thanks to Dennis Upkins for allowing us to reprint his review of Witch Eyes by Scott Tracey. A boy who can see the world’s secrets and unravel spells with just a glance. Braden’s witch eyes give him an enormous power. A mere look causes a kaleidoscopic explosion of emotions, memories, darkness, and magic. But this rare gift is also his biggest curse. Compelled to learn about his shadowed past and the family he never knew, Braden is drawn to the city of Belle Dam, where he is soon caught between two feuding witch dynasties. Sworn rivals Catherine Lansing [...]

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A Letter to Young Writers

By Maria|2016-05-24T14:52:18-05:00August 31st, 2011|Categories: Archive|

Congratulations, young writer, you live in a time unlike any other in modern history. It's a time filled with incredible opportunities not seen since the advent of the printing press.You live in a time where your words can reach millions almost instantaneously. You live in a time where gatekeepers (like traditional publishers) no longer exist, though, honestly for some, a good edit could come in handy. You live in a time where the character reflecting your life no longer need to be veiled. This, perhaps, is most important to you, as a LGBTQ writer. Now, I'm not the [...]

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News: Opportunity For Young Writers

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:42:59-05:00August 10th, 2011|Categories: Archive|

We were alerted to this great project, and we wanted to make sure y'all knew about it! From the press release: "Award-winning author Lyndsey D’Arcangelo announced a national story call-out for her new groundbreaking anthology series, My Story Is Out: High School Years. My Story Is Out: High School Years (MSIO) is intended to be a collection of personal real-life stories about surviving high school as an LGBT teen and coming out on the other side. “In working with LGBT youth through numerous writing workshops, I’ve discovered that they enjoy sharing their personal stories with each other,” said [...]

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