Tag Archives: Lambda Literary Foundation

Study of Book Reading Preferences of LGBT People

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I’m plugging a new study by Lambda Literary Foundation and St. Cloud State University. They’re surveying LGBT people about their book reading preferences (i.e. print books vs. e-books) in order to find out how to best reach LGBT readers.

I included the full press release below, and you can do the survey here.

I did it. It was fun. 🙂

The study caught my eye as an upcoming author who is batting around different ideas for marketing my work. As I filled out the survey, I realized how much my reading and book-finding habits have changed, in a really short span of time actually.

If you asked me two years ago, 100 percent of the books I read would be print. If you asked me one year ago, I’d say about sixty percent of the books I read were print. Today, that percentage has dwindled to about ten percent. I read books on my Nook almost exclusively.

And as a result, I’ve become a much different book-buyer and browser. I used to go to bookstores about once a month. Now, the last time I went to a book store was three months ago; and the last time before that was probably another three months back.

It’s sad on one hand, I think, for those of us Gen Xers who used to love browsing a bookshop, getting pulled in by an interesting book cover, and feeling like we were supporting Literature and independent booksellers with our purchases. Those shops are few and far between.

On the other hand, there’s something really encouraging about the growth of e-books and on-line bookselling. On-line booksellers offer sooo much more variety, and inventory.  I’m often looking to read something specific, like ancient world fiction or gay fantasy. Searching on-line, I can usually pull up dozens of those kind of titles pretty quickly, and there are published reviews and reader reviews and sample chapters to help me decide which ones to buy.

I think the great thing is that readers can find “niche” literature like LGBT fiction much easier than they could five or ten years ago.

Here’s the press release from Lambda:

Lambda Literary Foundation and St. Cloud State University
Conducting International Study
of Book Reading Preferences of LGBT People  

St. Cloud, Minnesota – What type of books do LGBT people like to read? How and where do they find the books that they like to read? Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF) and St Cloud State University Collection Management Librarian Rachel Wexelbaum are conducting an international study on the book reading preferences of 21st century LGBT people to help answer these questions.

This is the first large-scale study of LGBT book readership conducted in the age of EBooks and mobile devices. Librarians, writers, publishers, educators, counselors, and others are often operating on assumptions of what types of books LGBT readers prefer, how they find those books, and how they read them, based on pre-Internet reading habits. The results of this survey will help determine how best to reach LGBT book readers.

To take the survey now, click here. 

For more information about this study, please contact Rachel Wexelbaum atrswexelbaum@stcloudstate.edu.

 

On Various Things YA

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Two recent happenings in the sphere of LGBT Young Adult books caught my interest, and I thought I’d share them here.

First, Lambda Literary Foundation announced they are starting a new venture for young adult readers on May 1st called My Story Book Club. According to their press release on their website:

As part of our LGBT Writers in Schools program and our growing mission to promote the acceptance of LGBT works, their authors and LGBT students in schools, we are launching a national online book club for LGBT youth. Lambda Literary Foundation, in partnership with the Gay/Straight Educators Alliance and the National Council of Teachers of English, aim to provide readers 14 years-old and up the opportunity to read and discover LGBT works in the safe and protective atmosphere of Goodreads. 

The forum will feature youth moderators and a monthly Q&A with an author as well as typical features like discussion boards, polls, and playlists. Upcoming guest authors include Cris Beam of the trans-themed I AM J, Sara Ryan (“two girls in love” EMPRESS OF THE WORLD) and Charles Rice-Rodriguez (Latino, gay coming-of-age CHULITO). All three of those titles are on my ever-growing ‘to-read’ list. Their reviews are stellar, and I love that My Story Book Club will be showcasing diverse queer fiction.

Elsewhere, a blog post by sci-fi YA author Paolo Bacigalupi on Kirkus Reviews, has generated a lively discussion about the place of queer characters in future dystopias. In considering the question of why there aren’t more gay and lesbian characters in the genre, Bacigalupi suggests that gay experiences are better portrayed through allegory than overt characterization, because it’s hard to imagine a future more “dystopic” than modern gay queer living.

Bacigalupi says his goal in writing a dystopia about being gay would be to “rattle” complacent straight readers into awareness and understanding. His criteria for a good dystopian story are that it be “insurgent.” The story should “illuminate the horrors right before our eyes,” and “build empathy and humanity.”

The statement he makes that became a bit of a lightning rod is:

“So instead of writing a story about being gay, create one about being straight. Create a world where heterosexuality is a shocking desire.”

Bloggers like Rebecca Rabinowitz were quick to respond that obliterating queer characters from dystopian tales confuses the point Bacigalupi purports to make, and I would agree.

Imagine Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD taken from the viewpoint of a gay father who is determined to protect his son in a post-apocalyptic world of starvation and cannibalism. The possibility of gay parenting transcending terrifying obstacles seems to meet Bacigalupi’s criteria of insurgency, empathy and humanity delightfully well. It makes readers re-think their notions of fatherhood, and provides a powerful queer representation for young adults.

(Allright, THE ROAD isn’t a YA novel, but it was the most accessible title I could think of).

Would a gay THE ROAD have a wide enough access point to reach the “complacent straight readers” Bacigalupi talks about? Probably not. But for many of us authors and fans of LGBT YA, I think, that perennial debacle–making LGBT stories “palatable” to a non-LGBT audience–is kind of tired and irrelevant. We like our queers in outer space, in Medieval-inspired fantasy lands, as well as confronting dilemmas of modern living. A fresh setting is nice, but the fact that we exist, and can exist everywhere is the greater part of our engagement in literature.

Live Reading from The Seventh Pleiade

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Pretty cool — thanks to the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation retreat, I have my first videotaped reading.

It’s from my novel THE SEVENTH PLEIADE, an excerpt from midway through the story when things are heating up for the hero Aerander.

Let me know what you think!

Embedly Powered

via Vimeo

 

 

 

Back to the Grind

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I’ve been tight-lipped here for a little while, owing to a walloping on a couple of fronts.

I’m teaching my first ever college class this semester, balancing that with my full time job, and trying to widely hedge my bets on an agent for The Seventh Pleiade.

(You can all put down your bets on how soon the mental breakdown will arrive).

So, on the agent front, I’ve got some folks reading my full manuscript. Cross your fingers!  Querying/pitching is pretty torturous, but at least this time around I am getting some response.

Also on my mind lately:   Lambda’s announcement about changing guidelines for its 24th annual awards.

Responding to strong criticism about restricting nominations to self-identified LGBT authors and poets, Lambda’s Board re-opened the field to all writers, excepting three categories that recognize authors in stages of their careers: debut, mid-career, and lifetime achievement.

I’ve got a heap of mixed feelings about the announcement.   On one hand, exclusion rarely feels right to me.  When authors — LGBT or not — write fresh and honest stories about queer people, they are part of a united fight against censorship and marginalization, which are still very real obstacles in publishing.   Increasing the number of good queer portrayals is something to be lauded whether the author is non-LGBT, like George R.R. Martin (Song of Ice and Fire), or gay, like YA author David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy, Wide Awake).

On the other hand, I believe there is a need to celebrate queer authorship specifically, to have an occasion where people step up to the podium and validate that being a queer author matters.   It’s not just about the content of our work.   Queer authorship is a tradition, a history, a common struggle, and a triumph.   By celebrating queer authors, we celebrate more than simply queer themed work, as though it were a genre of fandom, like sci fi or romance.   We’re celebrating, and creating, community.

According to Lambda’s Executive Director Tony Valenzuela, the organization does not anticipate the policy change to have an impact on the number of queer authors nominated.   There were no restrictions on nominees for most of the Lammy’s history (notwithstanding the period of 2009-2010, when a 2009 policy was in effect restricting most awards to LGBT authors).

In correspondence with Valenzuela, he pointed out to me that queer authors have always competed extremely well, even dominating the competition.   Says Valenzuela:   “I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Queer Writers, Queer Community: The LLF Retreat

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I’ve been riding a wave of pride, community, and inspiration, since returning from Lambda Literary Foundation’s 2011 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices.

There were forty-two of us Fellows in the program, and I’ll be adding blog links to some of the fabulous writers I connected with.

Many people have been asking me to describe the experience. On a nuts-and-bolts level, it’s easy.

I was in the Genre Fiction workshop (Genre Queer, we quickly named ourselves).   There were ten Fellows in that track.   The instructor was lesbian mystery and sci fi author Katherine V. Forrest.

For six days we participated in half day workshops that were part didactic, in terms of craft, and part critiquing each others’ work.   Then there were evening programs with panels, featured speakers (including trans historian and artist Susan Stryker), and readings by the Fellows.

All this was great, and gave me a fresh perspective on my writing, the publishing biz, etc.   What was less expected, and a bit harder to describe, was how the program impacted my identity as a queer writer.

A writer’s life can be a lonely.   For minority writers, it can feel even more alienating.   This I was aware of well before the retreat, but meeting queer writers from parts of the country where there’s even less queer visibility drove the point home deeper.

A debate among LGBT/queer authors comes up frequently.   Are you an LGBT author?   Or are you an author who “happens to be” LGBT?

We’re all searching for a readership, and I guess folks who respond better to the latter question resent being limited in their reach because of who they are.   Or, they may prefer to say, being queer is an infinitesimal part of who they are (thank you very much), and it has nothing to do with their writing.

Fine.

I’ve always felt solidly in the queer-identified author camp, and the LLF retreat reinforced that.   A different way of looking at the debate is: how does being an out and proud queer author expand your reach?   I think it does, since it tells readers what they can expect from you, not merely in terms of what kinds of stories you tell, but also your point-of-view.   You have to define your product in order to market it.   You have to know yourself in order to sell who you are to other people.   Yes, I believe writing is necessarily an extension of who you are, whether it’s intentionally autobiographical or not.

So, back to the retreat, I guess it was the experience of being surrounded by so many other queer writers, who love queer fiction.  We were all eating it up ravenously, no questions about “will this play to a non-queer audience?” or “will other readers get it?”   This was what changed me.   I want to celebrate queer lit.   I want to shout it from the bell towers.   I found the place where I belong, and it’s fucking great!

Queer lit can change the world.   It’s happening every day.