Lambda Literary Award Finalists Unveiled
RSSBy Debra Lau Whelan
We may be letting you in on an embarrassing secret, but Vivek Shraya was in the middle of a very private morning routine when he found out that his book had been shortlisted for the 23rd annual Lambda Literary Awards in the children's and young adult category. "I was literally on the toilet with my laptop, my (no longer) secret morning ritual, and noticed the finalists lists were up via Twitter," he says about the award given annually by the U.S.-based Lambda Literary Foundation to works that celebrate or explore lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) themes. "I was completely frozen but kept refreshing the screen to make sure it wasn't some kind of mistake." His self-published God Loves Hair (Vivek Shraya, 2010), illustrated by Juliana Neufeld, is an anthology of a young man coming to terms with his sexuality, religion, and his hair, and it's the kind of book Shraya says he wished was around while he was growing up. "My hope was to put out the kind of book that could have made me feel less alone when I was a teenager, a book that spoke to my experience of being South Asian, the son of immigrants, Hindu, and queer," he says. "Books can have a transformative power, and I think it's crucial for young readers to have access to as many stories of different lives and experiences as possible." James Klise, who wrote Love Drugged (Flux, 2011), a story about 15-year-old Jamie Bates who tries to hide his sexuality and does all he can to change who he is when the truth comes out, says he found out about his nomination when a journalist emailed him at dawn asking for a quote. "I felt like quite a superstar over my Raisin Bran!" says Klise. Considering the sheer number of YA books published last year that are "smart, funny, thoughtful and insightful," he says he feels lucky that his book was short listed. Klise, a school librarian at Chicago's CICS Northtown Academy, says he often thinks about the value of the right book for the right reader, but writing for a specific audience wasn't something he thought about while completing his first novel because "the chance of publication seemed very, very remote." "Books offer such solace, and levity, and wonderful company," he says. "More than anything, I wrote it for me." Like Klise, Jane Eagland, author of Wildthorn (Houghton, 2010), says she didn't think about making Louisa gay when she set out to write her historical romance set in Victorian England. "It was only in the process of writing that I discovered that she experienced passionate feelings for her cousin Grace," she says. "It just felt right." Although some people have said that such relationships would have been completely unacceptable in back then, Eagland explains that "romantic friendships" between girls at the time were in fact accepted. "It was only later that they were regarded with suspicion and defined as "transgressive," she says. Originally published in the U.K., this provocative romance pushes boundaries—both literary and figurative—and Louisa's guilt feels "like a straitjacket that she has to struggle to break free of in the same way that she has to struggle against the role society tried to impose on all middle class women at that time," Eagland says. And that message still has meaning today. "I guess it would be good if young readers could identify with her and see the dangers of the self-imposed closet. Catherine Ryan Hyde, whose Jumpstart the World (Random, 2010) is a Lambda finalist in two categories (also transgender fiction), found out yesterday morning when Brent, a 15-year-old gay teen who writes the kidlit blog Naughty Book Kitties, posted it on her Facebook wall. "When I saw I was nominated in both categories, my hands got a little shaky," says Hyde. "The truth? I didn't expect to be nominated in even one category. So, I'm still reeling from seeing Jumpstart the World in both. That's not false modesty" Every now and then Hyde says she receives fan mail that just blows her away. "A few days ago, a 14-year-old wrote to me and said, among other things, "Every time I read one of your books it makes me feel closer to the world," she says. "I still haven't quite gotten over that. Not that I want to get over it." Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, best known for And Tango Makes Three (2005), one of the most controversial picture books in this country, say they've weathered more than five years of school and library challenges across the country for their true tale about gay penguins who adopt a baby penguin, so it's "important and so refreshing to have these moments in which books like ours are celebrated," says Richardson. Their latest, Christian, the Hugging Lion, (2010, both S & S), illustrated by Amy June Bates, is the true story about two men who release their adopted lion cub into the wildness and are reunited with the wild animal years later. Bates, who's in Japan, only found out when SLJ contacted her by email. "Christian the Lion loved and was loved and nurtured by the two men taking care of him," she writes from Kyoto, far from the recent tsunami disaster area and nuclear plants. "What is more important to a family than that? I believe that children instinctively know this and that looking at Christian they identify with him and the love he felt for his parents." This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping. Go here to subscribe.
