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.

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.

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. ((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.)) 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!