SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA

[bobthemole]

Originally posted by darkspirited1 at SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA

This comes from an article by rachelmanija

Our novel Stranger has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is
gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki's romance, like the heterosexual ones in
the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay
character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to
his sexual orientation.

This isn't about that specific agent; we'd gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character.

Comments

[gryfndor-godess.livejournal.com]

I read about this yesterday. It's such a disgrace, to the publishing industry and to the world in general. I'm glad the writers turned down the agent, and I hope we get the chance to read their book someday.

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

It's sad. I grew up reading YA that pushed the envelope a bit on controversial topics, so this surprised me.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

It's terrible, but I'm not terribly surprised. I've founds some pretty disgraceful crap in YA (on one, the author found me bitching online and contacted me!).

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

Whoa! What did the author say?