Malinda Lo on "YA Fiction and Issues that Aren’t Fictitious"

Read the Margins - Inventing the Asian American intellectual culture of tomorrow!

This gives me hope: "I absolutely did not set out to write a lesbian Cinderella. I thought it was going to be a straight story. And that’s probably because I have a lot of internalized heteronormativity in me. It didn’t occur to me that a lesbian Cinderella was even a possibility until my friend pointed out that the character really didn’t like the prince, that she liked this other character, who happened to be female. The realization that the main character liked another woman was extremely shocking to me. ... I didn’t think anyone would want to read a lesbian Cinderella. Luckily, I happened to be wrong. My experiences with Ash have made me much more confident in writing queer characters and saying, who cares that the majority expects characters to be straight? And it’s much easier now for me to do it."

Heroines of the Revolution

Hats off to sartorias and rachelmanija for their courageous stand in refusing to "straightwash" characters in their YA novel, just sold to Viking. Now let's make their book a roaring success...

Stranger, young adult novel with gay hero, acquired by publisher | Books | guardian.co.uk