I'm hosting the Queer #OwnVoices Social after this Thursday's "SCBWI Celebrates Queer Voices" Workshop! (And they're both FREE!)

SCBWI is launching a new series of FREE digital workshops, "SCBWI Celebrates #OwnVoices," and the first one will be this Thursday January 14, from 1pm-2:30pm Pacific, on Celebrating Queer Voices.

With authors Kalynn Bayron, Mike Curato, Alex Gino, Bill Konigsberg, Abdi Nazemian, and J Yang, and moderated by Phil Bildner, the discussion will cover:

"the joys and challenges of bringing queer representation into their work and the importance of telling the stories they wish they had as a kid."

The session will be held live on Zoom, and will be followed with a safe space social (hosted by me!) for those who identify as part of the Queer community. (That link will be provided during the live workshop.) If you're not able to attend live, the workshop will be recorded and made available on the SCBWI website by 1pm Friday January 15, 2021.

Here's more on the workshop faculty:

Phil Bildner (moderator) is the award-winning author of numerous books for kids including the 2021 Charlotte Huck Award Honor-winning, A High Five for Glenn Burke and the Margaret Wise Brown Prize-winning picture book, Marvelous Cornelius. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed Rip & Red middle grade series. Phil taught middle school in the New York City Public School system for eleven years and is the founder of The Author Village, an author booking business.

Kalynn Bayron is the bestselling author of the award-winning YA fantasy Cinderella is Dead. She is a classically trained vocalist and when she’s not writing you can find her listening to Ella Fitzgerald on loop, attending the theater, watching scary movies, and spending time with her kids.

Mike Curato is the author and illustrator of everyone’s favorite polka-dotted elephant, Little Elliot. His debut title, Little Elliot, Big City, released in 2014 to critical acclaim, has won several awards, and has been translated into over ten languages. There are now five books in the Little Elliot series, including Little Elliot, Big Family; Little Elliot, Big Fun; Little Elliot, Fall Friends; and Merry Christmas, Little Elliot. Mike had the pleasure of illustrating What If… by Samantha Berger, All the Way to Havana by Margarita Engle, Worm Loves Worm by J.J. Austrian, and contributed to What’s Your Favorite Color? by Eric Carle and Friends and Sunny Day: A Celebration of the Sesame Street Theme Song. His latest books, released in 2020, are The Power of One written by Trudy Ludwig, and his first YA graphic novel, Flamer! Publishers Weekly named Mike a “Fall 2014 Flying Start.” In the same year he won the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show Founder’s Award.

Alex Gino is the author of the middle grade novels Rick, You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! and the Stonewall Award-winning George. They love glitter, ice cream, gardening, awe-ful puns, and stories that reflect the diversity and complexity of being alive. For more information, visit alexgino.com.

Bill Konigsberg is the award-winning author of six young adult novels, including Openly Straight and The Music of What Happens. His latest novel, The Bridge, is in development as a limited series at Amazon. In 2018, The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) established the Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature. Prior to turning his attention to writing books for teens, Bill was a sportswriter and editor for The Associated Press and ESPN.com.

Abdi Nazemian is the author of three novels. His first, The Walk-In Closet, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction. His most recent, Like a Love Story, an Indie Next Pick, Walden Award finalist and Junior Library Guild Selection, was awarded a Stonewall Honor, and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Audible, Buzzfeed, the New York Public Library, and more. His screenwriting credits include the films The Artist’s Wife, The Quiet, and Menendez: Blood Brothers, and the television series The Village and Almost Family. He has been an executive producer and associate producer on numerous films, including Call Me By Your Name, Little Woods, and Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and two children.

J Yang is a New York-based illustrator who happens to be a Chinese-American trans man. During quarantine, he has acquired a cherry shrimp hobby, learned a couple of new recipes, and has become a square-shaped grandma in a D&D campaign. You can find his work in Portrait of a Tyrant, Our Rainbow, Spirit Day, and upcoming The Good Hair Day and If You’re A Kid Like Gavin. J is currently at large.

Hope to see you there! (No registration required - just click here for the zoom link.)

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you, 

Lee

Honestly Ben - The Teen Guy Rafe Fell In Love With In "Openly Straight" Gets His Story... And Maybe His Romance, Too.

Honestly Ben by Bill Konigsberg

Ben Carver is back to normal. He’s working steadily in his classes at the Natick School. He just got elected captain of the baseball team. He’s even won a full scholarship to college, if he can keep up his grades. All that foolishness with Rafe Goldberg the past semester is in the past.

Except...There’s Hannah, the gorgeous girl from the neighboring school, who attracts him and distracts him. There’s his mother, whose quiet unhappiness Ben is noticing for the first time. School is harder, the pressure higher, the scholarship almost slipping away. And there’s Rafe, funny, kind, dating someone else . . . and maybe the real normal that Ben needs.

Add your review of "Honestly Ben." the companion novel to "Openly Straight" in comments!

Openly, Honestly - A Free Short Story That Bridges Two Gay YA Novels (And Follows The Romance Between Rafe and Ben)

Openly, Honestly by Bill Konigsberg

Rafe Goldberg was planning to spend winter break at home in Colorado openly mourning what he almost had with Ben. He wasn’t expecting his best friend, Claire Olivia, to kidnap him. And he definitely wasn’t expecting what she has planned to cheer him up...

Ben Carver was honestly planning to spend winter break at home in New Hampshire not thinking about Rafe. But he wasn’t expecting to run into his ex-girlfriend, who’s still interested in him. And he wasn’t expecting to find himself still attracted to her...

Add your review of the free short story "Openly, Honestly" in comments!

Bill Konigsberg Guest Post: "The Lessons I Learned From the Trevor Project Awareness Tour"

This past September, I embarked upon a 5,100-mile driving tour of the South and Midwest. I stopped at 22 locations in 17 states to talk to LGBTQ youth about suicide, depression, and coming out.

Bill and young people at the Nashville Oasis Center

It was a life-changing trip. I met so many people who have forever changed me as a person, and as a writer. Those changes have shown up immediately in my life, and they’ll be seen in my writing as soon as my next book, HONESTLY BEN, which will come out about a year from now.

Following are the major lessons I learned, as well as a world-premiere sneak peek into one way these lessons are manifesting in my current writing.

1. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE T!
I knew that the current generation of teens were exploring gender in ways that my generation never did, but I don’t know that I realized just how much that was dwarfing all the other letters in the LGBTQ acronym. At least in terms of the visits I made to community groups along my route, I would estimate that 70 percent of the young people I met consider themselves to be somewhere on the trans spectrum.

I’m fascinated by this! I had so many questions, and the teens I met were happy to answer them. The big thing for me was that I came in with a binary notion of gender. My understanding was that “trans” meant that someone believes that they are not of the gender to which they were born. This is a terribly incomplete understanding of trans. Most of the teens I met considered themselves gender fluid, with some sense that sometimes they felt more male, and sometimes more female, and sometimes an entirely different gender. I met kids who were asexual, and pansexual, and polyromantic, and genderqueer. I think when I was growing up, these were not really considerations for my generation. I am so proud of those young people who are exploring their authenticity in these new ways, and I do think it’s up to those of us who write LGBTQ YA fiction to catch up.

2. I’M OLD!
Along those lines, I am SO OLD! I’ve never felt older than I did on this trip. I am 44, which by most standards is not actually that old, but I began to understand the gulf between the time when I went to school, and the current day. A few times when I spoke to groups that consisted of mostly trans and genderqueer teens, I was keenly aware that to them, my discussion of coming out in the 1980s would have been like someone coming to my high school and talking about coming out in the 1950s, pre-Stonewall. I would have found it interesting, but not particularly useful to me in my current situation. I definitely had the sense sometimes that kids were looking at me thinking, “when will this old, cisgender gay dude stop talking?”

Oh well. I am who I am, and I know that the teens I met know my heart was in the right place. And of course I did meet many teens who were clearly very glad to hear me speak. No matter how much better things get overall for LGBTQ teens, there are still so many painful stories. Which leads me to:

3. PROGRESS IS A MACRO THING
What I saw, over and over, was a world which is IN GENERAL far more accepting and celebrating of teens who are on the LGBTQ spectrum, but can still be extremely cruel on a micro level. That’s something of which those of us who are involved in this movement need to be very aware. I met countless young people who expressed to me, either in group settings or privately, that they weren’t sure that they’d make it through this challenging time. Being different than one’s family of origin, and being in a sexual or gender minority in a school setting remains extremely challenging for many people. Those who think coming out stories are passé are completely wrong. We still need to write these stories, because these stories are still terribly important to young people. We just need to update them. And of course we also need to write stories in which young people are LGBTQ but aren’t focusing on the coming out process. We need to do both.

4. TOBY IS GENDER FLUID
Which brings me to my final point. And I haven’t said this to anyone yet, so this would be a world premiere: I’m finishing up the sequel to my popular novel OPENLY STRAIGHT, and I am incorporating much of what I’ve learned into this book. Toby, as it turns out, is gender fluid. Going to a conservative all-boys school in Massachusetts, that’s going to be a struggle for them. But as those of you who have read the first book can attest, Toby is nothing if not authentic, all of the time. He’s not going to let anyone stop Toby from being Toby!

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I’m so glad I took it. Traveling around and meeting kids throughout the South and Midwest gave me a chance to see just how similar we all are. Whether we’re 17 and trans and living in Little Rock, Arkansas, or 44 and cis and living in Phoenix, Arizona, we’re all in this together. We all need help sometimes, and we all struggle with shame and we all have moments when our hearts are entirely open. That’s the most important thing for me to remember when I’m writing for teens. No matter our age or our label, we are all one.


Bill Konigsberg is the award-winning author of three Young Adult novels: Out of the Pocket, Openly Straight, and The Porcupine of Truth. He coordinates the Your Novel Year writing program at The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, and he lives in Chandler, Arizona, with his husband, Chuck, and their two Australian Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. For more information, check out billkonigsberg.com.

The Porcupine of Truth - A Road Trip involving family history, gay history, the girlfriend the hero can't have (because she's into girls) and a missing grandfather

The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg

Start at the hot girl.

Carson Smith isn't thrilled to be spending the summer with his estranged dad in Billings, Montana. But then he meets Aisha Stinson, the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. And the smartest. And the funniest. They connect like he never has with anyone...

Also she's a lesbian. So there's that.

Turn left at the missing grandpa.

Carson's dad is still bitter about the disappearance of his dad more than thirty years earlier. When Carson and Aisha discover a box full of cards from his grandfather, some of them recent, they realize the old man is still out there somewhere.

What are two bored teenagers in the middle of nowhere to do?

Proceed for 1,293 miles.

So Carson and Aisha begin a journey with no destination, to find a man who wanted to be lost, in an unreliable Dodge Neon, with one very prickly mascot. And what comes next is an extraordinary, enlightening, hilarious, inspiring, complete and utter mindblower of a road trip that will transform both their lives.

You have arrived at the Porcupine of Truth.

Add your review of "The Porcupine of Truth" in comments!

Openly Straight - An Out Gay Teen At A New School Tries To Not Be "The Gay" Kid... But It's Hard To Be Openly Straight

Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

Rafe is a normal teenager from Boulder, Colorado. He plays soccer. He's won skiing prizes. He likes to write.

And, oh yeah, he's gay. He's been out since 8th grade, and he isn't teased, and he goes to other high schools and talks about tolerance and stuff. And while that's important, all Rafe really wants is to just be a regular guy. Not that GAY guy. To have it be a part of who he is, but not the headline, every single time.

So when he transfers to an all-boys' boarding school in New England, he decides to keep his sexuality a secret -- not so much going back in the closet as starting over with a clean slate. But then he sees a classmate breaking down. He meets a teacher who challenges him to write his story. And most of all, he falls in love with Ben . . . who doesn't even know that love is possible.

Add your review of "Openly Straight" in comments!

And The Winner of The Lambda Literary Foundation's "Lammy" Award for the Best LGBT Childrens/Young Adult Book published in 2008 goes to...

21st LAMBDA LITERARY
AWARD WINNERS
BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2008


LGBT CHILDRENS/YOUNG ADULT

- Out of the Pocket, Bill Konigsberg, Dutton

Congratulations, Bill!


Find out more about "Out of the Pocket" here! And Check out the Lambda Literary Foundation's website here!

Out Of The Pocket

By Bill Konigsberg

Bobby is a 17 year old High School senior in conservative Orange County, California. He's the star quarterback on his school's football team, and his teammates are like brothers.

Except, they don't know he's GAY.

When Bobby is OUTED against his will by a student reporter, it's like everything in his life is rushing to sack him.

But he's a quarterback, and he's going to have to figure out a way to earn back his teammates' trust.

He's also going to have to figure out how to get to his future - a future that's going to be more difficult, and more public, than he ever imagined.


Interesting notes: This is Bill's debut novel, AND he's a professional sports writer (I bet that had a lot to do with the cool football setting.)

Add your review of "Out of the Pocket" in comments!