Blogathon 2016 – Page 2

4 Wishes for YA F/F Romance

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 20th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Publishing People|Tags: Queer Girls, Representation|

by Kate Brauning I want to talk about nuance. I want to talk about sexy, and imperfection, and happily ever after. I want to talk about being a bisexual editor (and author) of queer YA and why every book I acquire is inclusive in some way, but I’m still looking for That F/F YA Romance. Or you know, twelve of them. The YA queer fiction I’m receiving right now is amazing. I’ve had the honor of acquiring several outstanding YAs centering queer characters, and had to pass on many more that were just wonderful but not for me. [...]

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A Particular Invisibility

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 19th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|Tags: disability, Intersectionality, Representation|

by Kayla Whaley The first essay I ever submitted won an award. A group of writing professors at my university read the piece, described it as written with “delicate emotion,” and handed me a check along with the certificate. I called home as soon as I found out, literally breathless with the news. I told Mom I’d won a writing contest, and before she could even react, rushed to say she couldn’t ever, ever read the essay. A few days later my sister told me to call home. “Mom’s freaking out,” she said. “She doesn’t know why she [...]

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Never Am I Whole

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 18th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading, Teen Voices, Writers on Writing|Tags: Black, Intersectionality, Mental Health, nonbinary, Representation|

by Wesaun There’s nothing more exciting than the prospect of finally seeing myself in the books I read except, oh wait, I never do. I look and look and search and search and all that meets me is a gap, all that meets me is the laughter track as if I am on a comedy show and I am the queer character that has just had a cruel trick played on them. All that meets me is parts of my identity dismembered and separated into different stories but never am I whole. Because according to books, I do [...]

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What’s Your Queery? Advocacy & Inclusivity in Teen Library Services

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 17th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Teachers & Librarians|Tags: Activism, Advocacy, Allies|

by Candice Happy LGBTQIA Heritage Month and happy 5th anniversary, Gay YA!! I am so honored to have been invited to contribute to Gay YA’s awesome Pride Month and anniversary blogathon! As the President of the Young Adult Library Services Association and the Senior Librarian of systemwide Teen Services at the Los Angeles Public Library, I wanted to highlight how some library staff have advocated for greater inclusivity and awareness of LGBTQIA communities and provide tips for those who want to organize and advocate locally. I interviewed Xochitl Oliva and David Hagopian, the Chair and Co-Chair, respectively, of [...]

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Where They Never Bothered to Go: Hiding Queer YA from the Mainstream

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 16th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|

by Shaun David Hutchinson To say I've been overwhelmed by the response to my latest book, We Are the Ants, is a bit of an understatement. I didn't start out writing books with queer narrators. It wasn't until my third book that I worked up the nerve to do so (and that courage came in part from splitting with my first agent and feeling like my writing career was all but dead, and therefore I had nothing left to lose). My first two books had queer characters in them—a gay best friend that comes out in Deathday, and [...]

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Editing Diversity in Chile – Part 2

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 15th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Guest Blogs, Publishing People|Tags: Bisexual, international, Latin@, Representation|

by Daniela Cortés del Castillo I’ve already covered the challenges I’ve faced at Loba Ediciones when trying to publish diversely. Now I’d like to speak briefly about what happens when I change my hat and become an editor working with an author. Editing with intersectional feminism in mind is not easy. You carry around a lot of theoretical baggage that you need to use, but can also spoil the trip. I don’t want to become so pedagogical that I ruin a perfectly good story. Early on, I had to decide on a strategy, something that would allow me to [...]

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Publishing Diversity in Chile – Part 1

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 14th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Guest Blogs, Publishing People|Tags: Intersectionality, Latin@|

by Daniela Cortés del Castillo I thought about writing this guest post about my experiences as a young reader and how, as a teenager, there were no kidslikeme in the books I read, and how fantastic and helpful for my sense of self it would have been if there were. Now, all of these things are true, but it’s a topic that has been covered many times before (on this blog and elsewhere) by people who are much more eloquent than I. Therefore, I’d like to focus this post on something that, albeit a tad less interesting, might [...]

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At the Crossroads of Identity: Intersectionality in Queer YA

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 13th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016|Tags: disability, Intersectionality, Race, Representation, YA Community|

by Tristina Wright The other day a friend sent me the link to a book review. It was short—maybe a few sentences—but one phrase in particular stood out to me: “…too diverse for me.” The phrase was in reference to the main character’s gender identity, skin color, and sexual orientation. Merely three points of identity. Count them on one hand. Three really isn’t much when you think about it. Three pieces of candy. Three slices of pizza. Three books to read. However, they were three-too-many different from the socially-constructed baseline of white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled, Christian (or similar [...]

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Latinx Gay YA

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:40:49-05:00June 12th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Book Lists, Guest Blogs|Tags: Intersectionality, Latin@, LGBTQIA, PoC, Queer Girls, Queer Guys|

by Dr. Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez There remains a great need for Latinx Gay young adult literature. The list below is a compilation of texts that center and complicate these experiences. I’ve decided to make this list a space dedicated to stories written by self-identifying Latinx authors who have created gay Latinx protagonists. There are certainly other books with gay Latinx minor characters and books with gay Latinx characters written by non-Latinx. Many of the protagonists in the novels listed below express a feeling of isolation when they come out or at simply existing as a gay Latinx person. [...]

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On Creating the “Perfect” Booklist for a GLBTIQ Course

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:49-05:00June 11th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Blogathon 2016, Guest Blogs, Teachers & Librarians|

by Robin Kurz This summer, after two institutions and four years, I finally have the opportunity to design and teach a GLBTIQ course for library science students. Since it’s a “resources and services” course, I’m able to incorporate books rather heavily into the syllabus. I have taught a variety of these sorts of courses (from YA to multicultural) and use class-wide reads as a way to introduce students to relevant themes, genres, communities, etc. Basically, the entire class reads the same title and we then discuss it based on the questions and prompts I provide and inclusive of [...]

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