Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and just because things may look a little different this year doesn’t mean the books will be any less swoon-worthy! Here are five up-and-coming YA books coming out in February to get everyone in the mood for the day celebrating all kinds of love.
LGBTQ
Introducing Laurel Everywhere
By Tia SpragueOoligan Press is excited to announce our newest YA novel, LAUREL EVERYWHERE by debut author Erin Moynihan, set to launch November 10, 2020. LAUREL EVERYWHERE is an intimate depiction of the grief and mental-health issues often experienced with the loss of loved ones. The novel highlights complicated family relationships in the wake of tragedy: Laurel grapples with her own feelings of loss while her father spirals into a deeper depression, requiring a long stay in a hospital that specializes in grief. Although much of the book focuses on grief, loss, and mental health, LAUREL EVERYWHERE is also a story of survival, love, hope, and friendship. Follow Laurel on a journey of self-discovery, self-healing, and growth as she learns that sometimes it’s okay to not be okay.
Into the Queerosphere: Resources for Finding Your Next LGBTQ Read
By Hanna Ziegler
To anyone that’s been paying attention to recent trends in young adult (YA) over the last four or five years, the line-up of books slated for 2019 is both timely and highly anticipated. With the push for diversity in literature and media still going as strong as ever (perhaps even stronger than ever), it seems that publishers have finally started to seriously answer the call. Young adult (and middle grade) lists are heavy with POC leads and the number of books about LGBTQ characters has doubled since the last few publishing seasons (and that’s just looking at books coming out—pun intended—between January and April! The list for May through June is even longer!). This is extra important when you consider that as recently as 2012, just over 1 percent of YA books had any LGBTQ content at all.
Normalizing Queerness: Tips on Inclusive Editing for the LGBTQ Community
By Meagan Nolan
The role of an editor is to ensure throughout each stage of the editing process that the writer communicates their view of the world to the reader in the best way possible. With such a responsibility, editors should look at the ways in which the language and manuscripts they edit affect the world around them. Editors should look at how the representation of life and people on the page shape and change society’s understanding of real people in the real world. To gain further distance on the path towards impartial inclusion, here are some tips for inclusive and mindful editing in regards to the LGBTQ community.
Choosing to Read Diverse Books
By Joanna Szabo @Joanna_Shwaba
For most of my life, the majority of books I’ve read have been written by white men, from the picture books I grew up with to most of my favorite childhood series, and then almost everything I read as an English student throughout high school and college. It’s not that books by white men are all the same, or that they’re all bad. It’s that these books share a similar perspective. I had become so used to the white male viewpoint that I subconsciously recognized it as the standard.
Backlist gets front seat for summer reading
By Pam Wells @wellsworld
Here’s a quick reading guide—and thank heavens it’s a non-election year—for #summerreading in 2017.