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A “Real” Author: How Meeting Adam Silvera, Bill Konigsberg, and Angie Thomas Helped Me Find My Voice

By |2020-09-04T21:13:22-05:00September 5th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: , , |

by Zack Smedley To me, one of the central themes of Pride month is the idea that we all lift each other up…empowering each others’ voices so we can all accept ourselves for who we are. That said, I wanted to share stories of a few authors who have lifted me up—and, in doing so, helped me find my voice throughout my road to publication. Adam Silvera The month is September 2017. I’m standing in a library in Washington D.C., with about thirty other young adults my age. Sitting up front, signing [...]

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How (Not) to Meet Your Heroes

By |2020-09-03T20:35:26-05:00September 5th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: , , , , |

by Jasper Sanchez I’m not the kind of guy you want to bring as a plus one to a book signing. Trust me on this. I spent the entire time I was in waiting to see Alison Bechdel working up the courage to say something eloquent about how her portrayal of butch identity in Fun Home meant so much to me as a baby queer trying to puzzle out the intricacies of my own sexuality and gender identities only to get to the front of the line, freeze, and stutter, simply, “Thanks.” Or, [...]

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Kick, Push, Coast, Indeed

By |2020-09-02T20:52:30-05:00September 4th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , |

by Cam Montgomery I like to joke about the ways in which the stories I write, or other author faves write, are written for me. Literally, about me. This past year I was given the opportunity to really put that to the test. Anthology Queen, Saundra Mitchell, approached me about writing a contemporary story for her next antho, OUT NOW: QUEER WE GO AGAIN. It’s a collection of contemporary queer stories written by queer authors. Needless to say, I was mad stoked to be asked. We’re talking, full-body sweats, jumping-around, text-your-best-friend stoked. [...]

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The Joy of Knowing Yourself

By |2020-08-22T16:03:56-05:00August 28th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , , , , |

by Maggie Tokuda-Hall I wrote The Mermaid, The Witch, and The Sea for one kid in particular. Her name is Clare. I met her when she was nine, and I worked in a bookstore. For the first two years I knew her, her parents would bring her into the bookstore where I worked, and would do most of the talking for her. She has a mess of unruly, bright red hair (she is AWARE she looks like the girl from Brave) and was also painfully shy.  But then one day a flip I hadn’t touched switched. [...]

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Lupe

By |2020-08-26T22:12:32-05:00August 27th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: , , |

by Aida Salazar I grew up watching impromptu drag shows in my living room. Many of my (very Mexican and straight) mother’s friends were men. They happened to be gay. Her best friend, Lupe, was like family. He and Mami knew each other from back in the pueblo when they were little and played dolls together. They both managed to find each other as immigrants in Southeast Los Angeles where they picked up right where they left off. Perhaps they were so close because Lupe’s strict Catholic family had disowned him and had even sent him to prison [...]

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Fan Fiction: By Us, For Us

By |2020-08-24T18:41:25-05:00August 26th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , , |

by Kayla Ancrum As the days blur together and book shipping times get longer, people are beginning to reinvest their time in fan fiction. The art form is hardly without prejudice. Even mentioning it here might elicit some wincing or an eye roll or two. Most of the serious fiction writers I’ve met view it with disdain: a 7/11 lunch of doritos, arizona tea and beef jerky to their white wine and salmon with a salad on the side. Several authors I know personally, who honed their [...]

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Celebrating Queer Joy through Stories

By |2020-08-22T17:11:07-05:00August 25th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: , , |

by Auriane Desombre In my sophomore year of college, one of my best friends made me watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. I didn’t think I would like it, but he basically tied me to a chair and forced me to watch, and, a handful of episodes in, I was proved extremely wrong. I loved it. So much so that, when we’d watched all three seasons of Avatar, we kept right on going into Legend of Korra, the sequel show. The last season of Korra was still airing when we started, and I caught up in time [...]

We Are Connected

By |2020-08-22T16:40:15-05:00August 23rd, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: |

by Adib Khorram Queer bookish joy. That brief seemed like an easy one at first. There’s lots of moments of queer bookish joy! I love joy! I love books! I’m queer! This was supposed to be easy! But I forgot. The quarantimes make everything hard. There are days when I feel almost normal. When I can follow a routine that’s not too far removed from what life was like before. And then there are days when I can’t motivate myself to do anything. When I sit on the couch and play [...]

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Love, Respect, and Celebration: The Legacy of Queer Literature

By |2020-08-19T01:15:44-05:00August 22nd, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Readers on Reading, Writers on Writing|Tags: , , , |

Caleb Roehrig has written several YA novels starring queer characters, including mystery, heist, and vampire novels. Buy them from one of the author's favorite indies, Literati Bookstore or The Book Cellar! by Caleb Roehrig In 2011, three and a half years before I wrote the manuscript that would become my debut novel, my husband and I put all of our belongings into storage and we moved to Helsinki, Finland. It was a world away from everything we knew, in an unfamiliar country where we didn’t speak the language, and where we had [...]

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We Can Be Heroes

By |2020-08-21T06:32:41-05:00August 21st, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Readers on Reading|Tags: , , |

This Summer, YA Pride has been running a pre-order campaign for three upcoming books by queer Black authors. The Summer of Everything is one of those books! We're at 11 pre-orders for it now, and would love to get to 25-- just 14 away! If you pre-order the book and tweet or email us proof of purchase (contact@yapride.org), we will add it to the count! by Julian Winters Growing up, I struggled with reading. I simply couldn’t get into the books assigned to me in class and rarely read [...]

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