#QueerYA
When I was a queerling, none of the queer young adult books out there were available to me. They absolutely existed—but I didn’t know that, and no one was going to hand them over to me—and that has always made me want to add more stories of queer youth to the world. I remember when I got to the bookstore in the nineties, and gained access to Books-in-Print (on a microfiche, of all things) and saw just how many queer books existed… the mix of elation and outright fury over (a) having access to all these books and (b) never having had knowledge of or access to all these books before that moment was so very much an example of being a queer person.
You don’t know what you don’t know, until you finally know, and when you find others like you? The world opens up and you finally get to start being you.
So, for me, writing queer YA? It’s a little like time travel; I write the stories I wish I’d found.
I wouldn’t be able to do this if it hadn’t been for the queer writers of #QueerYA that came before me. And to the librarians and teachers out there fighting to put queer books into queer hands—thank you. You are changing lives.
My QueerYA Books:
“Leap” in Boys of Summer, edited by Steve Berman—My queer summer spark of romance short story included in this collection of summer-themed stories.
Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks—My debut queer YA novel, about a kid who always has a plan in his bullet journal, and just wants to keep his head down and get out of high school and begin that plan for his life who instead develops a teleportation problem, which definitely isn’t part of his plan.
Three Left Turns to Nowhere, by Jeffrey Ricker, J. Marshall Freeman, and ‘Nathan Burgoine—This collection of queer YA novellas includes “Hope Echoes,” my story of queer friendship and community where a queer young man with a gift for seeing the past decides to try and deliver a long-lost lesbian love-letter while he’s stranded in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Ontario.
Stuck With You—My rom-com-esque book about a young man seated beside the last person in the world he wants to spend time with for a long train-ride, and the sparks that follow between frenemies who maybe didn’t really know that much about each other after all. (This one is a Hi/Lo—high interest, low complexity for reluctant readers, ESL readers, and those with reading disabilities)
