Malinda Lo
Blog
Jun 30, 2012
Wrapping up YA Pride 2012
It’s June 30, which means my first YA Pride month has come to an end. I hope that you enjoyed the past month of posts focusing on LGBT young adult books. It was a lot of fun to put together — though also quite a bit more work than I anticipated! (I foolishly thought, hey, interviews aren’t that hard for me, plus I’m mostly just going to post lists. Ha! The joke’s on me! But I do think it was worth it.)
My goals for YA Pride were to celebrate the LGBT YA that is out there, but also to draw attention to new and upcoming LGBT YA titles. During the course of interviewing several authors, I also discovered that one of my goals was to try to get to the bottom of whether or not it really is harder to publish LGBT-themed YA than straight (heterosexual) YA. I think the answer is mixed, and actually I find that to be pretty encouraging.
The five most popular posts, in order, were:1
- YA Pride: 2012 LGBT YA Books, January-March
- Announcing YA Pride Month (This is kind of funny, since there’s nothing in this post except an announcement that YA Pride month is going to happen. Though I do love the picture of the Navy ladies kissing.)
- YA Pride: 2012 LGBT YA Books, April-June
- From Problem to Pride: A Short History of Queer YA Fiction
- YA Pride: “Am I allowed to write this?”
I’m not surprised that the lists have been the most popular, but I’m absurdly happy that Daisy Porter’s brief history of queer YA has made it into the top five. I love that people were interested in the history of queer YA! If you missed any of the past month of YA Pride posts, you can check them all out here.
So now I’m turning to you for some feedback. I really enjoyed putting together this month of posts (despite the unexpected work!) and I’m considering doing it again next year. If I do, what would you like to see in a YA Pride month of posts? What did you like? What would you want more of? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
And thanks for visiting my site this month and being part of YA Pride.
- Keep in mind that these stats are from June 29, and some of the YA Pride posts have been online longer than others and that might contribute to their higher rankings. [↩]
I liked the lists and added many new titles to my to-read list. I also really enjoyed the interviews. So, more of everything for next year, please!
I definitely hope you do this again next year! I really liked the book lists and the interviews.
I would like to see something highlighting books whose main character happens to be queer. (As opposed to books that are about being queer — though those are good too.) Those are the books I want to read, and they can be hard to track down!
The lists were very helpful. I am a “questioning” 14-year-old and I love that I’ve finally found books I can relate to. Thank you so much!!
@ Sarah M — That’s an interesting idea, thanks! I agree, those kinds of books are especially hard to find.
@ Corinna — I’m so glad you found the lists helpful. You might really like A.S. King’s next book, Ask the Passengers, which comes out in October.
Loved the month’s worth of posts & appreciate all the work that went into it! The lists were great, since I try not to miss any glbt ya titles, and it’s good to know what should be on my radar for later this year. Especially liked the notes of which stories in collections have glbt characters. The interviews & other posts were also great–I read everything!
The lists were brilliant, although as you know of course I am biased (just finished adding them in to our master list). Actually I thought your LGBT YA Pride month was pretty much perfect and I would do it exactly the same next year! x