Covers of young adult and middle grade books Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender, The Henna Wars by … [+]
For Pride month, I interviewed 10 LGBTQ authors about their latest books, broken out into two parts. Below are five young adult and middle grade authors who each explore the inspiration behind their book, their intended audience, their learning process and what they hope readers take away. See part 2 featuring authors of adult books here.
Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After (Balzer + Bray, May 5, young adult)
Kacen Callender is the author of young adult novel Felix Ever After (Balzer + Bray).
What was the inspiration for your book?
When I was questioning my gender identity a few years ago, I came across the label demiboy. I’d never heard the term before, but it perfectly described the feelings of my nonbinary identity that is sometimes fluid and becomes more binary as a guy. I’d wished I had heard the word before, and also thought how much of an influence a transgender character in a story was for me on my journey to discovering that I was trans, so decided I wanted to write about a demiboy character, Felix, with the hope that he might help someone on the path to discovering their gender identity, too.
Who is your intended audience for the book?
The intended audience is transgender and nonbinary teens. Though some content might not always be appropriate for younger readers, I also hope that trans and nonbinary adults can find joy and validation in Felix’s story.
What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
I constantly struggle with feelings of self-worth and self-love, as a Black, queer, and trans person in a world that doesn’t always love me; I already knew that I have to love myself, but writing Felix Ever After, which is so much about self-love and validation, felt like a constant affirmation of love for myself.
What do you hope readers take away from it?
I hope that readers will enjoy a funny, romantic contemporary, where realistic teens make mistake and learn and grow; but my biggest hope is that transgender and nonbinary youth will feel validated and seen.
Adiba Jaigirdar, The Henna Wars (Page Street Kids, May 12, young adult)
Adiba Jaigirdar is the author of the young adult novel The Henna Wars (Page Street Kids).
What was the inspiration for your book?
Henna was the inspiration for this book! I was on a summer holiday visiting my grandmother in Bangladesh. I had a lot of tubes of henna and decided to teach myself how to do henna. Growing up, it had always been my cousins applying henna to me, so I had never learnt how to do it. Unfortunately, I’m not a good visual artist so I wasn’t very successful at doing henna. But it sparked an idea of two teen girls with rivaling henna businesses. The more I thought about it, the more I loved the idea. Then, I thought, wouldn’t it be even better if the two were romantically interested in each other? I’ve always loved the enemies-to-lovers/rivals-to-lovers trope, so it seemed like the perfect way to write the story.
Who is your intended audience for the book?
Obviously, as a writer I hope that my book has universal appeal. But I really wrote it for my younger teen self. A queer Brown Muslim girl who never got to see representations of herself in books or any kind of media, really. So, extending that outwards, my intended audience for this book is the teens who are like me. The queer Brown and Muslim girls who are unfortunately still starved of representation in media.
What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
I learned a lot about how I’ve changed as a person since I was a teenager, to now. A lot of the things that my main character, Nishat, goes through on the page are reminiscent of experiences that I had as a teenager, but I didn’t have the tools or language to be able to deal with it in the way that my character does. I suppose I learned that I’ve grown a lot!
What do you hope readers take away from it?
I hope that readers can take away Nishat’s resilience. She is the kind of character who comes up against a lot of difficult things but never wavers in her trust in herself and her love for who she is. For queer readers, and especially queer readers of colour, this is a really difficult thing to hold onto. So many of us are told from a young age that we shouldn’t be who we are, that we are undeserving of love and support. But Nishat is not a character who believes those things, even when they are said to her. So, I hope that readers can leave the book feeling like they love themselves a little more.
L.C. Rosen, Camp (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, May 26, young adult)
L. C. Rosen is the author of the young adult novel Camp (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).
What was the inspiration for your book?
The original inspiration for Camp were those 1960s Doris Day/Rock Hudson screwball comedies about the battle of the sexes. I always loved that genre, and felt it was a shame that queer stories were so few and far between then that we never got to see that genre as a queer story. So I took that idea, and made it queer and modern and for teens, by putting it at an all queer summer camp where they could have a sort of “battle of the masc/femme” love story.
Who is your intended audience for the book?
It’s young adult, but I think adults would enjoy it, too—and straight teens and adults are included in that! A summer camp love story is a summer camp love story! But, when I think about right now, I think mostly about all the queer kids at home who maybe are missing their summers because of COVID-19, and how they might even be cut off from their queer communities because of living with their straight parents. So I really hope Camp gets to them most of all.
What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
I think I had a chance to sort of reclaim actual summer camp for myself? I went to a conservative Jewish summer camp and experienced a lot of homophobia there. So being able to write about a joyous summer camp was a real joy, and made me think about summer camp in a new way.
What do you hope readers take away from it?
I hope that readers take away that there’s no right way to be queer, and we have to define our queerness for ourselves, not let other people define it for us. That being more traditionally masculine or feminine has no value to it—what has value is being the version of yourself that makes you the most happy.
Sarah Prager, Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History (HarperCollins, May 26, nonfiction)
Sarah Prager is the author of the middle grade nonfiction book Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 … [+]
What was the inspiration for your book?
I was overwhelmed by the response to my LGBTQ+ history book for teens, Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World, and saw there was a need for more like it. So many high schoolers told me they wished they had learned about this hidden history earlier. I wanted to create a book for even younger readers so that they could enter their adolescence already knowing that LGBTQ+ people have been a part of human history for all time and are not some new fad. And if those middle schoolers come out to themselves, they could already know that they have powerful ancestors at their backs who are pretty amazing role models.
Who is your intended audience for the book?
This is a middle grade book, so it’s intended audience is readers ages 8-12 or so. That being said, I think teens will also enjoy it and the illustrations make it a gorgeous coffee table book option for adults as well. I’ve even used it as a way to start some conversations with my three-year-old. Non-LGBTQ+ and LGBTQ+ readers alike will learn some fascinating stories.
What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
As a cisgender person writing transgender stories in this book, I learned to listen and edit at every turn. When writing trans history, historians struggle between “accuracy” (like using a person’s legal name instead of their chosen name) and respect, and how using modern terms and constructions could be anachronistic. For me, I believe telling trans stories today must be done with respect to the pronouns and name that person would most likely have used today, based on the ones they chose to use throughout their life. I was saddened to see how many sources I encountered in my research do not take that approach.
What do you hope readers take away from it?
LGBTQ+ people are diverse, talented, strong, and fabulous. Our gift to do things our own way has led to inventions from the computer to the high five to satellite radio to airplanes. Those inventors are all in this book and I hope readers are inspired to see that LGBTQ+ people are an integral part of everyone’s daily lives and that our work to dismantle homophobia, transphobia, and other discrimination helps all people through allowing LGBTQ+ innovators to contribute to society as their full selves.
Leah Johnson, You Should See Me in a Crown (Scholastic, June 2, young adult)
Leah Johnson is the author of young adult novel You Should See Me in a Crown (Scholastic).
What was the inspiration for your book?
Liz’s story rose out of an attempt to write into the empty spaces that I saw in YA growing up. I wanted to put a girl on the page who lived and loved and did her best by the people she cares about that I hadn’t read before. I was also thinking a lot about the imagery of what it would look like to give a queer Black girl everything she deserves—to literally put a crown on her head and call her a queen. What would seeing that have done for me as a teenager? What does seeing that mean for me now? All of the pieces sort of fell into place when I began framing it for myself in that way.
Who is your intended audience for the book?
My goal, always, is for Black girls—especially queer Black girls—to see themselves reflected on the page and feel both seen and cared for in my work. They—we—are my first priority.
What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
This book pushed me to confront a lot of the fear and shame I’d been holding onto since my own adolescence surrounding queerness. As you see Liz growing in the book—getting closer and closer to the type of life where she feels comfortable enough to live her life out loud—I was taking that journey as well. This book will always hold a special place in my heart for its lessons in radical joy and honesty.
What do you hope readers take away from it?
Liz Lighty is growing up in a town that is very small, very white, and very wealthy—all things Liz herself is not. She’s constantly surrounded by people reminding her whether implicitly or explicitly that they don’t believe she’s worthy of the same freedoms and privileges that they have. So she’s internalized shame, she’s espoused silence with survival, and she’s made herself small as a means of navigating her community. So I knew all of that needed to be part of Liz’s arc: shattering these expectations of the Good Minority, learning to take up space, figuring out what it means to enter every room as a whole person—all of that. I would like my readers to know that too. You deserve every crown, every happy ending. I promise.
