Malinda Lo

Last week someone emailed me this question: “I am writing a short story about a lesbian main character … and almost had it finished when I had a panic attack. I was at a conference talking about my story when a lesbian told me she would never take it seriously because I wasn’t a lesbian and ... More→

A question from a reader: “Setting aside the tangled web of labels of low, dark, high, heroic, etc. fantasy (or speculative fiction) — do you consider yourself to write ‘lesbian’ books, or books that happen to be about lesbians?” I’ve been thinking about how to answer this question for some time now. It’s about categorization, ... More→

Tripping to Somewhere by Kristopher Reisz is a novel about two girls who run off to find the Witches’ Carnival. “A band of gypsies tramped across the earth, sweeping the bonds and boundaries of the modern world away with a brush of a hand. Nobody knew where they came from. Nobody knew where they’d turn ... More→

The third of the four novels I resolved to read this year is The IHOP Papers by Ali Liebegott. I admit I chose it for the cover, which I love, but as soon as I read the first paragraph, I was hooked: “First of all, I’m twenty and I’ve never slept with anyone. I’ve been ... More→

I don’t often read contemporary young adult novels. It’s not because they’re not good — some of them are amazing — but I’m a genre reader at heart, so it takes a special hook to pull me into a contemporary YA. Sister Mischief by newcomer Laura Goode had plenty of those hooks: it’s about queer ... More→

On Monday I noted that in light of this post from two authors who were asked by an agent to de-gay their book, I was planning to do some statistics wrangling and see if I could quantify some of what’s happening in LGBT YA publishing. Apparently my latent economics major is raring to go (or ... More→