Archive – Page 21

Reasons Writers Exclude Queer Characters: Debunked!

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:39-05:00May 25th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Writers on Writing|Tags: Representation|

by Libertad Araceli Thomas As an aspiring writer, over the past year I’ve heard and read perhaps a dozen reasons why some writers are reluctant to incorporate queer narratives in their work in progresses. I mean, I get it, writing characters outside of your comfort zone isn’t always easy. What do they always tell us, write “what you know”. As unreal as it sounds a lot of people don’t know any Queer people personally and want to hold onto that excuse but in order to unlock something deeper from your writing, I think it can be a learning experience [...]

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Searching the Aisles for Girls Kissing Girls

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:39-05:00May 23rd, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Fun Things|Tags: Other Media, Queer Girls|

by emily m. danforth It’s nearly summer, and for me that always means more time to read and write: long mornings spent at my desk followed by endless hammock-afternoons spent with a stack of novels and a pitcher of iced coffee kept close. But in our house, summer also means movie nights. Lots and lots of movie nights. (I tend to indulge my love of horror films in the summer—I save them up all year and binge in June, July, and August. Usually my wife will not watch these particular movies with me, which means I end up [...]

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Let’s Take Queer YA Out of the Closet

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:40-05:00May 22nd, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: Booktube, Representation|

by Vee S. Authors, editors, and readers are important to the Queer YA community, but there’s another group that matters too: reviewers. We are lucky that there are so many fantastic reviewers reading, loving, and reviewing Queer YA books. But a growing number of reviewers have adopted a “code of silence” around queerness in the YA books they review. They are well meaning, but that code of silence is putting queer YA in the closet. thingslucyreads posted this excellent video on what she calls Booktube's "code of silence." Luce says in her video that she's noticed that in reviews [...]

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Never Sellout Your Heart

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:40-05:00May 21st, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: gay, publishing|

by Adam Silvera When my agent and I went on submission with More Happy Than Not, I expected editors to reject the book. I wasn’t wrong. I’m not some pessimist who believed publishers would pass on my book simply because it was my book. This certainly isn’t the case for all the editors, but a couple of them—their names and houses to remain unnamed—didn’t think the character’s homosexuality was really the best move for this book and essentially wanted me to rewire my narrator’s heart. More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera (SoHo Teen, June 2015) [...]

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Tumblr Teens: BookMad for Diversity

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:40-05:00May 20th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading, Teen Voices|

by Manda/BookMad “People talk about coming out as though it’s this big one-time event. But really, most people have to come out over and over to basically every new person they meet. I’m only eighteen and it already exhausts me.” – Everything Leads to You by Nina Lacour This ongoing call for diverse characters—of all races, of all genders, of all sexual/romantic orientations, anything you can name under the sun—isn’t so widespread because readers are hungry for new and interesting characters to paint the ever-changing, complex fictional worlds they’ve built inside their heads. It runs much, much deeper [...]

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No Dumbledores Need Apply

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:47-05:00May 18th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Editors, Representation|

Hey! We mixed up our links today, 5/20/15. If you're looking for the post on what teens on tumblr are saying or about the call for diversity and having limited spaces to call home, check out Tumblr Teens: BookMad For Diversity. If you want an editor's perspective on why he's going to stop using the phrase "just happens to be gay" and what he's looking for in queer YA, read on! by T.S. Ferguson You may be aware of a conversation that happened in April focusing on the phrase “just happens to be gay.” The conversation was started by [...]

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Making Choices in LGBTQ YA

By Marilla|2020-03-28T13:41:47-05:00May 18th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: Bisexual, lesbian, LGBTQIA, Queer Girls|

by Dahlia Adler I've spoken a lot about how Under the Lights wasn't originally a f/f romance. I had always planned to write one, but my very first was going to be the YA I'm actually drafting now, which is a contemporary inspired by the historical War of the Roses. (It's still f/f - not to worry!) But when I was drafting UtL, I really, really struggled with the romance I was writing for Vanessa with this boy, and why there was zero story and zero chemistry. I was talking to one of my critique partners about it, and I [...]

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Labels are for Soup Cans (and also for me)

By Nita|2020-03-28T13:41:47-05:00May 17th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: asexual, Representation|

by Nita Tyndall I was twelve the first time I realized I was queer. Back then, I identified as bisexual. Although I didn’t think I was a lesbian (even though I’d never felt attracted to boys), I wanted to keep my options open. And when I was twelve, those were the only two words I knew—lesbian and bisexual, though neither of them felt right. Gay didn’t, either, because I’d always associated that word with gay men, and I wasn’t one of those. So from twelve to thirteen, I was bisexual. When I was in high school and started [...]

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Graphic Novel Review: Lumberjanes.

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 16th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Review|Tags: Fantasy, graphic novel, Intersectionality, LGBTQIA, Middle Grade, PoC, Queer Girls|

Lumberjanes (Boom! Studios, 2014) One of the biggest challenges I face when reading, reviewing and now, publishing, is to find balance in the types of queers stories I read/review/publish. It often feels to me that the vast majority of what is out there - and what is made more visible when it comes to reviewing and award-winning - are the stories that deal with violence, homophobia, or the ones where being queer is the story. Don’t get me wrong, because those? Are super important and should be told, read and talked about. But equally important in [...]

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We’re All Bending Reality

By Olivia|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 15th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: gay, Queer Guys, Representation, Speculative|

By Alex London As a closeted teenager, thinking about any kind of future for myself was an act of speculative fiction. I attended a conservative all-boys prep school, a place where, at the time, athletes were kings and heroes and there was only one way to be a man. Any deviation from that way was seen as a personal failing. And I was failing. I had deviant desires and strange daydreams. I was different. I also had no gay role models and no books with gay characters to look to. Without any external guidance to look to, my [...]

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