Gay YA literature and the wrath of the Internets

[owlmoose]

I had thoughts on the article about the agent who asked two authors to de-gay their YA novel (a story which has now come under dispute by the agent in question; my thoughts on the resulting pushback are best summed up in this tweet by Scott Westerfeld, but I digress). It turns out that renay also had thoughts, and we bounced those thoughts around and off each other, and we posted the results over on ladybusiness:

http://ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/15574.html

Your thoughts on our thoughts welcome!

Comments

[jeanniemac]

I have friend (who happens to be a YA Lesbian author and knows the authors in question) who was very upset by this. My feeling is that, while yes, there are two sides to every story and the truth of this one is most likely some where between the two sides, that there really aren't enough LGBT characters in YA novels. And given the rash of LGBT teen suicides, that makes this a real and important issue and one that the agents should have been less clueless about.

[owlmoose]

Definitely. And I find it disappointing that the agents made it into something personal, when the authors did such a good job of trying to keep the focus on the big picture, which is a real problem regardless of what may have happened in this particular instance.