by Kaitlin Mitchell
My name is Kaitlin. Maybe you’ve seen me around book twitter, boosting marginalized creators and clutching my own words close. I admit, I am a serial tweet-deleter. Given my comfort sitting in the background, I’m willing to bet that most who read this post will have no idea who I am.
If you look at my twitter bio and scroll down my profile, you will learn a little about who I am. Fantasy writer. YA Pride social media manager and co-editor. Senior college student.
You will also quickly learn who I am not. I am a writer, but unagented. I promote diverse books, but my own, you cannot pre-order or add on goodreads. I have eight months until graduation, and everything I told myself I would accomplish during my college years in regards to writing remains unfulfilled.
(Can you tell I have a “graduate school and professional possibilities day” in my senior seminar coming up?)
Trembling under the weight of my feelings of failure, there have been several times where I contemplated stepping back from the book community. Low points in the query trenches or month five without writing a single word in my WIP where I felt I was occupying space that didn’t belong to me. My proximity to amazing books and writers is always inspiring, but at times, it is also intimidating.
So now, y’all who are meeting me for the first time know a few things about me:
- My name is Kaitlin
- I work for YA Pride
- I have low self-esteem
It’s nice to meet you!
Despite my incessant worrying about the future, the YA Pride 2020 Blogathon has helped me reflect upon my own experiences with queer bookish joy. Our contributors reminded me that we all start somewhere, and no two journeys are exactly alike. Further, the outpouring of positive responses to their posts reminded me why I always choose to stay active in the book community in moments where I feel unimportant: one of my biggest sources of joy is queer books. Typing omg congratulations!!! when a new queer book deal is announced. Screaming in my dorm room when a queer book makes it big (Hi, Aiden Thomas). Knowing which books to recommend teens who struggle to find themselves on the shelves. Working side-by-side with fellow members of the book community to show publishing that our stories matter.
I began my journey into the online book community when I joined Tumblr my junior or senior year of high school. Around that time, I began drafting my first certified queer book (though looking back, some scenes in my earlier manuscripts had delightful queer undertones). Still, this was my first intentionally queer book. A f/f YA fantasy, it starred a bisexual protagonist before I even knew that I was bisexual. Quote from 17 or 18-year-old Kaitlin to my mom as she was reading an early draft: “My main character is bisexual. I just want all sexualities to have representation.”
Yes, I was one of the gays who felt extremely connected to the queer community before I realized that I, too, was a gay.
Somewhere during the process of writing and revising my very queer book, I figured out the real reason why my main character was bisexual. Around the same time, now a freshman in college, I entered the query trenches for the third time. Yes, I really have queried three books. As one might expect, I was prepared for a lot of the same routine–query, send out requests, get rejections, cry. But what I did not anticipate was that this round of querying would be a lot less solitary. I began to get more involved in the online book community, and in September, I joined YA Pride as their Tumblr mod. Through this experience, I had more opportunity than ever to connect with the members of the queer YA community, providing book recommendations and reblogging fanart and curating book lists that got way more attention than I had expected.
My favorite book list to put together is our annual Black History Month list. When I wrote our first list in 2018, I found only eight books. In 2020, YA Pride’s Queer Books by Black Writers Spreadsheet will have 46 books after I add in Kosoko Jackson’s recently announced All Kingdoms Must Fall. We have such a long way to go in publishing to ensure Black writers are receiving the in-house and community support they deserve, and I am committed to doing everything in my power to help bring about the changes I want to see. But seeing the growth of queer YA books by Black writers being published over the past few years has been a huge source of queer bookish joy for me, especailly as a queer woman of color.
Likewise, seeing the support the queer book community has given these lists has made me feel incredibly connected to my fellow queer readers and writers. We celebrate each others’ triumphs together. We post book reviews and book photography, and gush about new voices on youtube and twitter. We retweet and we like and we comment with keyboard smashes and heart eye emojis. There is so much beauty in being a part of a community that celebrates and uplifts writers who, like myself, probably experience a lot of doubt about whether their voice is wanted. There is so much beauty in being a part of a community whose main goal is to ensure queer teens can explore their identities in the pages of young adult books.
Queer bookish joy and community is not limited to our online experiences. Some of my greatest moments of queer joy have occurred finding readers of queer YA outside my phone or computer screen. At the beginning of quarantine, I gave a copy of one of my favorite reads to a friend of my teen sister. At the end of the summer, I received an exuberant video message via my sister proclaiming how much the book had made them feel seen. Their queer bookish joy was my queer bookish joy. The people who celebrate and find a home in queer YA books offline are not any less a part of our greater queer YA community than those of us online. As I mentioned, I didn’t join the online book community until later in my high school years. For many years prior, I devoured queer YA in private, working through my own identity long before I realized I was–or even considered that I could be–queer.
I have not achieved all of my publishing goals yet, but what I have achieved is queer bookish joy. I am grateful for the friends I’ve made through a shared love of diverse books. I am grateful for the authors who have shown me that my queer books are worth pushing through revisions and rejections for. I am grateful for the queer YA book community and its endless, inspiring joy despite the obstacles many queer people still face in publishing.
For all the queer YA readers and writers out there, this is your community. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, or whether you have rep’d by in your bio. It doesn’t matter if you join us from twitter, instagram, or youtube. In truth, it doesn’t matter if you join us online at all. Questioning or settled in an identity, reading or writing to see yourself more clearly before you even consider you could be queer, this community is for you. Thank you for being a part of it.
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Kaitlin Mitchell is a fantasy writer with a love of magic, ruthless girls, and diverse representation. She joined YA Pride as a Tumblr mod in 2017, and now manages their social media accounts and co-edits periodical issues. When not doing all things bookish, you can find her writing papers and studying for exams. You can connect with Kaitlin on Twitter and Instagram: @writerkaitlinm
