Home/Tag:Queer Girls

The Solitary Endeavour Of Queerness

By |2020-09-17T23:12:41-05:00September 18th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , , , , |

by Adiba Jaigirdar Growing up queer can feel really lonely in a lot of ways. It can feel lonely in that you don’t even realise you are growing up queer. It can feel lonely in that when you do realise you’re queer, you don’t know if you’re allowed to be. Because you’re Asian, and you’re Muslim, and those things seem like an antithesis to queerness. All the queer people you have ever known have not looked like you. All the queer people in TV or movies or books have not looked like you. So surely…you can’t be queer?  [...]

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Finding My Queer Self Through Books

By |2020-09-16T01:18:15-05:00September 16th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: , |

by Adrienne Tooley I didn’t come out until 24. I didn’t even start questioning until 23. I was a late bloomer in many senses, furthered by my own obliviousness. I didn’t see queer women in the books I read, the media I consumed, or even, really, in the world around me. I knew they existed, but I didn’t know them, or their feelings, or their journeys. And I was worse off for it. When I met the woman who is now my wife, once I’d done a deep dive and examined myself [...]

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The Importance of Being Earnest

By |2020-09-14T00:02:25-05:00September 15th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, New Releases, Writers on Writing|Tags: , |

by Ciara Smyth I am a terrible person to write about queer joy because I am cranky and when I smile people think I’m being sarcastic. An anecdote I like to tell, in outraged tones, is about the time my oldest friend read my first ever manuscript and said with genuine surprise, ‘This is funny. Which is weird, because you’re…not.” I am yet to recover from this mortal wound. I’m one of those people who cannot really appreciate anything for longer than two seconds because as soon as I achieve something I [...]

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Finding My Way to Queer Fairytales and a Book Deal

By |2020-09-03T21:56:36-05:00September 6th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , |

by Leslie Vedder I’ve always wanted to be a writer.  This has taken a lot of different forms for me over the years.  Illustrator/author of stapled together grade-school masterpieces. Closet fanfiction writer. (Only in the sense that I wrote from the closet; my fanfiction was always slash!) Then I got into original work, learning to put the worlds and characters I’d imagined in my head down on paper.  My first attempts were mostly epic fantasy stories that hit all the familiar beats I’d read so many times—you know, nine guys go on a [...]

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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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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 [...]

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Teens Talk About LGBTQIAP+ YA: Part 1

By |2020-08-19T22:34:34-05:00August 21st, 2020|Categories: Archive, Readers on Reading, Teen Voices|Tags: , , , , , |

Earlier this year, we asked teens to tell us about the LGBTQIAP+ YA books that have touched their lives. This is our first round-up of those stories! We are so excited to be able to share these. Books can touch lives in unseen ways, something that is especially the case for LGBTQIAP+ YA books. We wanted to make some of those unseen experiences visible. This series of post is a reminder of why LGBTQIAP+ YA is so important, why it is so necessary for all of us to keep writing and advocating for these books. "Of Fire [...]

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On shelving–and unshelving–the book of my heart

By |2020-08-13T21:55:12-05:00August 20th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , , , , |

by Rebecca Kim Wells In 2015 I reached a major milestone in my writing career: I signed with a literary agent. The book I had written was a dark fairy tale-inspired YA fantasy, drenched with blood and magic and lies and quests. It was also a book featuring a queer main character and romantic relationship. I saw no reason for this to be a problem. It was true that there weren’t that many queer YA books out there (especially not published by major US publishers), but there were some. [...]

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When Queer Books Lead to Queer BFFs

By |2020-08-18T10:25:07-05:00August 18th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: , |

by Kelly Quindlen Three years ago, when I was going through a rough patch, my parents gave me some advice. “We think you need queer friends,” my dad said. “Have you considered a gay cruise?” I laughed out loud when he suggested it, but I knew the larger point was true: I was starving for friends who reflected my queerness back to me. I have some amazing friends, but they are overwhelmingly straight and cis. This is not their fault. We can’t all be blessed with queerness. But the point [...]

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The Path to Publication: Writing the Queer Black Girls of Cinderella Is Dead 

By |2020-08-13T20:48:08-05:00August 17th, 2020|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: , , , , , , , |

by Kalynn Bayron I’ve always been a fan of genre fiction. From horror to fantasy to sci-fi. I love all things magical and atmospheric and bone chilling. I’m a writer because I was a reader, first. In those stories I found ghosts, mythical creatures, people with impossible powers, aliens, orcs, fairies, elves, kings and queens. What I didn’t see was Black people or queer people. Until I discovered Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler I didn’t see Black women centered and I didn’t see queer people being treated with care and concern, [...]

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