Malinda Lo

As I mentioned earlier this month, I’m publishing the complete interviews I did with several authors for my recent AfterEllen.com article about lesbian/bi characters in YA fiction.

This week brings us to the final Q&A, with Canadian author Carrie Mac. Her 2005 debut novel The Beckoners won the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Since then she has also published the Triskelia trilogy, set in a gritty, futuristic fantasy world, as well as several standalone YA novels including Crush, a short but sweet coming-out story. (FYI, I totally understand why the main character of Crush develops her crush on Nat, who would so be my type!)

Malinda Lo: Do you feel that there’s a difference in the kind of YA books about LGBT characters being published in Canada vs. the United States? Or does the market pretty much overlap?

Carrie Mac: I don’t notice any difference at all. The market is definitely smaller here in Canada, so we do rely on the American market to tap into our books too. I know that I’m not the only YA writer in Canada who writes with an American audience in mind. I’d say most of my readers are American.

ML: I haven’t had a chance to read your Triskelia trilogy, but I have to ask: Are there queer characters in them? If so, can you tell us who they are?

CM: Yes, there are several queer characters in the trilogy. The two main ones are a couple, Jack and Gavin. In the world I create in those books, being queer is frowned upon by the ruling elite, and is accepted by the rebellion as normal. My main character, Eli, shifts his opinions of ‘benders” (as queers are derogatorily called by the ruling society) as he gets to know Jack and Gavin.

ML: There haven’t been a lot of queer characters, lesbian or gay, in fantasy and science fiction (particularly YA fantasy and sci fi). Why do you think that is so?

CM: I’m not sure. There is so much layering and world-building in fantasy and science fiction … perhaps it would be one too many story lines in a tale already full of so much detail? I know for myself that I can’t leave queer characters out of my writing, even if they’re gay and only I know it, or I don’t spell it out. For example, if a secondary character of mine is a dyke, and she’s busy slaughtering the bad guys with her machete, I’m not going to work in a train of thought sequence mentioning her lover, or lack of one, just to articulate that she is, in fact, a dyke.

My first YA book, The Beckoners, also has a strong couple of gay boys in it, and they are part of the story line, but there’s also a girl, Lindsay, who is very secondary and doesn’t have a lot of face time in the book, who I know is gay, but I’m not sure if even she knows yet.

ML: Crush was published by Orca Soundings in a series meant for reluctant readers. How did they react, initially, to a lesbian teen romance? Were they excited about it? Concerned?

CM: Orca is an amazing publisher to work with … Andrew Wooldridge, the editor there, is always excited about pushing the limits with YA books. He wasn’t sure how the book would be received, but he was eager to get it out there and see. He wasn’t concerned at all.

ML: You’ve said that you talked to a number of teens about your books — kind of like a focus group. Have you focus-grouped the book Crush? If so, what did they have to say about it?

CM: I haven’t done focus group on Crush … but of all my books, it generates the most feedback. I hear from teens all the time after they’ve read it. Some of them just tell me how much they loved the book, but most of them email me about their own stories. Some of them come out to me when they’ve only just come out to themselves. I value those emails, and I think about those kids a lot. I was a little dykelet in a Bible-thumping town, so I know what it’s like to be going through that as a teen.

ML: Did you have any particular intention or goal in mind when you wrote Crush?

CM: I wanted to write a love story without the pain and angst being the main characters. I wanted a mostly happy little story of two girls in love.

ML: Are there any YA books about LGBT characters that you would particularly recommend?

CM: Many of Francesca Lia Block’s books — flaming faggots and pretty boys and trannies abound! Deliver Us From Evie, by M.E. Kerr. Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson (a good YA read even though it’s not meant as such). From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jaqueline Woodson. The Dear One by Jaqueline Woodson. Another Kind of Cowboy, Susan Juby.

ML: What are you working on next? Does it have queer characters in it?

CM: My next book is a sci fi YA novel called The Gryphon Project, and again, it has a secondary character in it who is gay. My world is populated with queers, so I do the same with my books. I am reluctant to be pigeonholed as a “gay” writer, so I don’t tend to make my character’s queerness the main “issue,” except with Crush. I’d like to do a full length YA novel dykelet story … but I’ve got a couple other publisher commitments before I can sink my teeth into that one.

Portions of this interview originally appeared in slightly different form in the article “Young Adult Books Move Beyond the Coming-Out Story, But Still Face Hurdles.” For more on Carrie Mac, visit her website.