Malinda Lo
Blog
Jun 1, 2012
Announcing YA Pride Month
Hello website readers! I’m sure that many of you are aware that June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month here in the United States, as proclaimed by (among others) President Barack Obama. This means that across the country, many cities host Pride parades and celebrations in which LGBT people gather together to joyously declare how awesome it is to be LGBT.
In celebration of the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, left, kisses her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach, Va., Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2011 after Gaeta's ship returned from 80 days at sea.
Of course, being gay isn’t all about parades. While much progress has been made in equal rights for LGBT people lately, there is still a long way to go.
Harvey Milk fights the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gays and lesbians from working in California public schools, in 1978
So Pride is also an opportunity to look at where we come from, honoring the people who fought for our rights before us, and think about the work that is yet to be done. That’s what I’m going to be doing here on my site in June — in the context of YA fiction.
During June 2012, I’ll be celebrating YA Pride here on my website. There will be thought-provoking essays. There will be interviews with authors who are writing YA novels about LGBT main characters.1 There will be giveaways. So I hope you’ll come back this month and join the conversation about LGBT YA: What is it? What should it be? What sorts of roadblocks, if any, are in the way of publishing more LGBT YA fiction? I think it will be a very interesting discussion.
Join me on Monday to begin a month of YA Pride!
- I decided that in my YA Pride series I wanted to mostly invite writers who identify as LGBT to be interviewed or guest post for my site. While I don’t believe one needs to identify as LGBT in order to write about LGBT people, I also feel that there is value in supporting LGBT writers. In the interests of full disclosure, I have had trouble finding transgender-identified YA writers to participate in this series, simply because there are so few of them. I haven’t finished my search for contributors yet, and I may still be able to find a trans YA writer to participate, but if I don’t, the reason is not because I didn’t attempt to find one; it’s because we need more of them. [↩]
Sounds like a great month.
I love this idea, and look forward to each post!
~S
Wooo! Thanks for reminding me. This is the first time I’ve been single in very many years so I can finally celebrate pride and rejoin the community (it’s tough for us bi’s sometimes – we’re often forced to choose). I’ll definitely be linking to you on my own blog!
Hey, I’m not a writer that’s published or under contract, but I am a young transgender author that would love to write for your blog about what it means to see LGBT fiction that actually involves the T versus erasure or mockery, or how being trans* ties into a character in another setting like zombies or superheroes. If you can’t find anyone else, I’d be thrilled to get interviewed or write something for you and add a trans* perspective!
Yay! I’m so pumped for Pride Month, and so happy to see this on your blog–it’s going to be one great month of blogging. Also looking forward to the discussions in the comments.
Cathaoir Byrne — Thanks for your comment and your offer, I appreciate it! I’ve decided to go a different route this year, but if I do this again I might indeed invite posts from readers/writers of LGBT fiction in general.