Viking Says Yes to Gay YA

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a post on the representation of Minority Characters in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. It was primarily in response to authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith's attempts to find an agent for their post-apocalyptic young adult novel and how they had been asked to either make a gay character straight or drop the character from the novel entirely as a condition for the agent to represent the novel. Well, according to this post on Genreville, the authors have successfully sold their novel to Viking Press--without having to edit the character's sexual orientation. The book, entitled Stranger, is scheduled for winter 2014.

Minority Characters in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature

For the last week, I've been following the response to this article on Rose Fox's blog, Genreville, hosted by Publishers Weekly. The article publishes an open letter from authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith about their attempts to find an agent for their post-apocalyptic young adult novel and how they have been asked to either make a gay character straight or drop the character from the novel entirely as a condition for the agent to represent the novel. They ask for greater representation of LGBTQ characters in YA science fiction/fantasy literature and ask readers to vote with their wallets and make it clear to agents and publishers that there is a demand for these characters.

The story has spread across the internet and numerous blogs and has engendered a lot of response, much of it initially sympathizing with Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith. Even though the authors went out of their way not to name the agency in question, rumours began flying, and the agency has come forward with a rebuttal posted on Colleen Lindsay's blog, the Swivet. In it, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe denies the accusations of Brown and Smith and says that book was rejected for other reasons. Lindsay, a known LGBTQ advocate and a self-identified queer woman, follows up the response with a statement in support of Stampfel-Volpe. Genreville has since posted a follow-up which includes an excerpt of Stampfel-Volpe's response and a further response from Brown and Sherwood reaffirming the truth of their original letter.

Naturally, this has caused all sorts of discussion across the internet with people taking one side or the other, and many others coming somewhere in the middle and thinking that this all the result of a miscommunication. Cleolinda Jones excellently summarizes the whole debate on her blog, and YA Highway has a great summary as well, so I won't go through it all here other than to say it's worth reading through.