Gotta say, I’ve had a patch of good stuff happening lately. From my videotaped reading coming out earlier this week to getting an acceptance from Wilde Oats for my short story Mike’s Pond, I’m feeling pretty proud of meself, and lucky.
Wilde Oats Issue Nine will include my short, fictionalized memoir Mike’s Pond about growing up in suburban Western New York. The issue comes out in December, and I’ll be sure to do a major blast on the release.
I also have a guest blog up today about working with LGBT teens in the suburbs. It was a great opportunity offered to me by author/blogger Brandon Shire. Brandon recently published The Value of Rain, a novel about a gay teen who gets sent to an institution to turn him straight. He’s donating half of his book sales to LGBT youth agencies, and he was kind enough to do a plug for Pride for Youth, where I work.
I’m still following Yes Gay Ya, and working on an article about diversifying young adult literature. Since Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith put out their testimonial on censorship, Colleen Lindsay leant her platform The Swivet to Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of Nancy Coffey Literary Agency to tell a different side of the story.
Stampfel-Volpe writes that the authors leaked the name of the agent they accuse (from Nancy Coffey); the agent never offered representation on the condition of cutting out a gay character or making him straight; and the Genreville article is a mean-spirited publicity stunt.
Only a fly on the wall knows the truth.
But out of the kerfuffle, there’s an opportunity to look critically at the status of LGBT YA, and how we can get more and better representation of LGBTs in literature. That’s what I’m writing about. Deep stuff.
