Vee – Page 6 – YA Pride

Interview: Claire Kann, author of Let’s Talk About Love

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:10-05:00September 26th, 2017|Categories: Author Interview, New Releases, Publishing People|Tags: asexual, Black, Intersectionality, PoC|

Alice had her whole summer planned. Non-stop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV show. The only thing missing from her plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice told her she's asexual). Alice is done with dating—no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done. But when Alice meets Takumi and she can’t stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for, her blissful summer takes an unexpected turn. Claire Kann is the author of the forthcoming novel Let’s Talk About Love, which comes out January 23, [...]

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Announcing: GayYA’s Name Change! (& Giveaway)

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:10-05:00September 11th, 2017|Categories: Fun Things, Updates and Announcements|

When we launched GayYA in 2011, our goal was to mobilize a clear and active market for LGBTQIA+ YA, to make it known to publishers that people were excited to buy these books. In early 2011, several authors had shared stories of being told “we love your book— but can you make your character straight?” It was clear that these requests agents and editors made did not come from outright homophobia, but the idea that books like that couldn’t sell— that at best, they were issue books. This sparked many conversations in the YA Twitter community of the [...]

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An Open Letter From You

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:10-05:00July 1st, 2017|Categories: Author Guest Blog, Guest Blogs|Tags: Black, Non Binary, PoC, Recovery|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 15 – Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon by Cam Montgomery The first time you kiss a girl, you’re twenty-two-years-old. A college junior, majoring in two things that’d make you spiritually rich, but broke in the pockets. Young, queer, and naïve, is what they call that. You call it living. Oh, the girl? You’re still friends. (On Facebook.) And she, to this day, doesn’t know she was “your first.” All the same, you remind yourself, constantly, that you owe her more than you’re willing to admit. She, this femme with the eyes like whoa and the hair [...]

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‘Room at the Table’: Pulse, Vincent Rutherford, and the Work We Have Left to Do

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:10-05:00July 1st, 2017|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Activism, Advocacy, Coming Out, Native, Non Binary|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 14 – Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon by Weezie Wood I woke up the morning of June 12, 2016, to a text from my cousin asking me if I had seen the news. I was already running late for brunch with my dad and I typed out a quick “No, what’s up?” before heading out the door. I should have heard the news in the car. By that point in the day, there wasn’t a news or radio station that wasn’t blasting what had happened around 2 am that morning in Orlando, but I wouldn’t learn [...]

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You Are Not Alone: Finding Community as a Nonbinary Teen

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:11-05:00June 28th, 2017|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Teen Voices|Tags: asexual, Bisexual, Intersectionality, Non Binary, PoC|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 12 – Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon by Kav If I'm being honest with myself, I never thought of myself as “straight.” Growing up, I never labeled myself that way and instead thought along the lines of “I’ll love who I love, no matter their gender.” That's not to say that I never struggled to discover my gender and romantic and sexual orientations or that I never had a coming out experience - it's definitely been a rocky ride. But when it came down to it, I was always fortunate enough to have been sure [...]

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I am the captain of my soul: On Being a Queer, Muslim Teen

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:11-05:00June 23rd, 2017|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Teen Voices|Tags: Intersectionality, Muslim, PoC, Queer Girls|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 11 – Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon by Warda When I’m asked what it’s like being a queer teen in today’s age I kind of want to counter with: “Well, what’s it like having two eyes and a nose?” You know, something snarky and light-hearted that makes it clear queerness is perfectly normal without having to go too much into my own experience. It’s something I’ve always shied away from; sometimes I can’t find any words and other times there aren’t enough words in the world for me to even begin to explain. But, hey, [...]

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Interview: Robin Stevenson, author of PRIDE, a Middle Grade Non-Fiction Book
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Interview: Robin Stevenson, author of PRIDE, a Middle Grade Non-Fiction Book

Archive, Author Interview, New Releases, Writers on Writing

Interview: Robin Stevenson, author of PRIDE, a Middle Grade Non-Fiction Book

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:11-05:00June 15th, 2017|Categories: Archive, Author Interview, New Releases, Writers on Writing|Tags: Activism, Middle Grade, Non Fiction|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 7 - Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon For gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their supporters, June is a month of pride and celebration, and the high point of that month is the Pride Day Parade. Pride Day is a spectacular and colorful event. But there is a whole lot more to Pride than rainbow flags and amazing outfits. So what exactly are we celebrating on Pride Day? How did this event come to be? And what does Pride mean to the people who celebrate it? Last year at ALA, I got to chat with [...]

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Introducing: #BooksToTeens
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Introducing: #BooksToTeens

Archive, Updates and Announcements

Introducing: #BooksToTeens

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:11-05:00June 12th, 2017|Categories: Archive, Updates and Announcements|

We’re thrilled to announce our new campaign: #BooksToTeens! #BooksToTeens is a new initiative to help get more LGBTQIA+ books into the hands of teens that need them. We’ll feature a new crowdfunding project every other week on GayYA’s Twitter. Most of the projects will be donorschoose.org fundraisers, but we may branch out into Kickstarters for queer anthologies, or other similar crowdfunding pushes. Anything that will eventually help get more LGBTQIA+ books to teens! We’ll use the hashtag #BooksToTeens to promote them. A good portion of what we do at GayYA can be boiled down to one goal: get [...]

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“An Anchor to Guide Them”: On the Importance of LGBTQIA+ Media

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:11-05:00June 10th, 2017|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading, Writers on Writing|Tags: Black, Intersectionality, Queer Girls|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 4 – Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon by Kiana Nguyen I kissed my first girlfriend in 2011 when I was 18, and it was the first kiss that held my entire heart. I was excited, I was anxious, I was so happy to finally have them in my arms I felt close to bursting. I was so scared of finally feeling real that I wanted to run. Kissing Casey*, who later came out as genderqueer and trans, was an experience so unreal and so right, I felt starved for the joy that rushed through [...]

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Sometimes You Just Outlast It

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:14-05:00June 7th, 2017|Categories: Guest Blogs, Writers on Writing|

Pride Month Blogathon: Day 1 - Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon by Brent Lambert Writing this makes me a bit sad because I really wanted better for all of you. I hoped that by the time I got the courage to tell this story that it would be antiquated and an experience that felt too far removed for any teenager of today to really be able to grasp. Unfortunately, I hoped too much for the future and we are where we are. And now instead of looking forward to my story being a relic, I find that I [...]

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