LGBTQ+ Pride Month may be coming to an end, but Pride isn’t something that goes away once June is over.
As a part of #OtherworldlyPride, we asked our authors what Pride means to them! Read their responses below, and find out more about Tor Teen’s epic, new queer YA fantasies!
Charlotte Nicole Davis, author of The Good Luck Girls
“To me, pride means loving yourself for being yourself. It means being unapologetic about who you are. I didn’t come out until college, so I think part of the reason I love writing YA so much is that it gives me the chance to imagine the queer childhood I never had. Queer kids deserve stories about falling in love for the first time, about finding your people, about discovering who you are. They deserve to be proud, too.”
TJ Klune, author of The Extraordinaries
“On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States held in a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment requires all states to grant same-sex marriages. The queer community was elated. Shortly after, some straight people declared that homophobia was over. In the fall of 2016, I was called a homophobic slur in a grocery store parking lot by a good ol’ boy in a truck after he’d seen me getting out of my own car with a rainbow pride sticker on the back. I said nothing, ignoring him and going about my day. But I kicked myself repeatedly for not sticking up for myself. The reason I didn’t, of course, was for my own safety. Anecdotal, sure, but it wasn’t the first time, nor the last. When I was a baby queer in Tucson, Arizona, I learned from a group of drag queens that Pride isn’t just a yearly thing we get together to celebrate for. Pride is a state of mind. Pride is a riot. Pride is standing up to the street preachers with their bullhorns at our parades, spinning lies about hellfire and eternal damnation. Pride is a rebellion to all those who think us as lesser, who will never understand what it means to have individual rights threatened. We are here. We are queer. And you better get used to it because we’re not going anywhere.”
Lauren Shippen, author of The Infinite Noise
