Tag: Lambda Literary Award

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Interview with Author Bill Konigsberg

Bill Konigsberg is the author of six books for young adults, which have won awards including the Stonewall Book Award, the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, and the Lambda Literary Award. Bill lives with his husband, Chuck, and their two Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. Please visit him on Twitter @billkonigsberg.

I had the opportunity to interview Bill, which you can read below.

CW: Discussion of mental illness and suicide.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT. Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Thank you, and sure! I’m the author of six young adult novels, all of which explore the lives of LGBTQ characters. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, with my husband, Chuck, and our Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. Before turning to YA lit, which I did by publishing my first novel in 2008, I was a sports writer for ESPN and The Associated Press. In fact, I became the first openly gay man at ESPN when I wrote an essay called “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays” in 2001.

As a journalist for websites for ESPN, how would you describe the transition from sports writer to young adult author? Would you say there are any times where your former writing experience bleeds into the other?

It’s really a different world. With sports journalism—any journalism, really—you’re looking to be as concise as possible, using an economy of words. Creative writing allows me to really branch out and explore language in a way that journalism never did. I would say that a bunch of my novels include athletics, and (hopefully) I do that well. ☺

Where would you say your ideas for books usually come from? Do you look towards anywhere specific for inspiration while writing?

It’s kind of all over the place. Sometimes, like with my most recent, THE BRIDGE, I get inspired with a concept and move forward from the idea. More frequently with me, I want to write about a specific character whose voice I hear in my head. It’s like I’ll get a line of dialogue or something that triggers me to explore more, as if a character is leading me and saying, “Hey there, come see about me!”

Some of your books, including The Music of What Happens, deal with the subject of masculinity, of characters trying to figure out what it means to be a “man” as well as navigating toxic masculinity. Could you lend us your thoughts on this?

This has been such a huge theme in my life. Maybe because of my youth, in which I played a lot of sports but was also dealing with what was at the time a secret, that I liked other guys? I think over time I began to really focus in on those questions about what it means to be a man, as opposed to the lessons we learn from media, or in our society. I think standing up and being counted even when you’re different is more courageous than so many of the toxically masculine attributes—violence, being taciturn—are. So yes, I seem to come back to that issue a lot. I think it’s important that we allow boys to be who they are, and not try to live up to some bogus and false vision of masculinity that breaks down the more you look at it.

Your latest book, The Bridge, deals with some very strong subjects, including suicide and depression. What drew you to writing about this? Is there any advice you would want to give to other writers writing this topic?

I was drawn to write about suicide and depression because of my own history with both. I have been dealing with chronic depression since I was a teenager, though at the time I don’t know that I knew what that was. In my mid-to-late 20s, I attempted suicide by taking pills. The pain in my life was just too much for me to bear, or that’s what it felt like at the time. It took me a long time to write about these things, because it’s such a vulnerable thing, talking about mental health. I didn’t want people to judge me based on that, but really over time I began to realize that was the same thing as not wanting to be judged for being gay. My life’s work, it seems, is to keep uncovering the things I’m not supposed to talk about, and writing about them in great detail. 

As for advice for someone writing about this topic: I would stress the importance of not glamorizing suicide. Suicidal feelings can be so powerful, and what is most helpful, in my opinion, is letting people know that they are not alone, that other people have felt the same way. The most dangerous thing we can tell people who are struggling is that something good comes from completing suicide. We need to stress how important it is for all of us to stay another day, even when it’s really hard.

What advice would you give to writers in general, especially those looking to finish a book?

I’d stress that when we talk about finishing a book, often we are talking about finishing a first draft of a book! And by that, I mean that novels generally take at least three rounds of revisions to get really good! So instead of comparing your first draft to someone’s third (or eighth, you never know!), just get the words down so you can see what you have and get into revision, which is where a lot of the magic happens.

Aside from writing, what do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I love spending time with my dogs, and I love spending time with good friends. Those are probably the things I spend most of my time doing, and I really enjoy both.

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

That’s a tough one. I’ve been asked a lot of questions over the years! Maybe something about legacy, about what I hope I have given to young readers. And the answer to that would be that I hope some young readers have seen their own hearts in my writing. That they have recognized something innately wonderful in my characters that they can also identify in themselves, and feel really good about.

As a writer who has been in the game for a while, how have you seen the landscape of young adult literature change since you first entered and today, or even since you were a young adult yourself?

In the 13 years since my first novel came out, the landscape of young adult literature has changed drastically. I remember winning the Lambda Literary Award with that first novel, Out of the Pocket. There were maybe 25 books that year to choose from that had LGBTQ protagonists. Now, on a yearly basis, there are probably 300! I think the quality of writing has improved a lot. I think the diversity of voices has grown significantly, though we are still working on that. I think the types of intersectionality seen in these novels today dwarfs anything that was happening 13 years ago. In short, I think we’re in a YA renaissance, where some incredible work is being done.

Are there any questions you are working on and at liberty to discuss?

I have a novel coming out next May called DESTINATION UNKNOWN. It’s about two boys meeting in 1987 New York City, with the AIDS crisis looming all around them. I have read so many books about AIDS, and have always dreamed of writing one. Having grown up in that time and place, it has been a huge issue in my life, and I think I’ve needed to write about it for a long time.

Finally, what queer books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

So many! 

ASK THE PASSENGERS by A.S. King

TWO BOYS KISSING by David Levithan

ARISTOTLE AND DANTE… by Benjamin Alire Saenz

LIKE A LOVE STORY by Abdi Nazemian

LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB by Malinda Lo

FELIX EVER AFTER by Kacen Calendar

To name a few…

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Interview With April Daniels

A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, April Daniels is the Lambda Literary Award nominated author of the Nemesis series, following trans superhero, Danny Tozer, who inherits her superpowers after a fateful encounter with a dying superhero. Adding to the growing LGBTQ+ superhero narrative, Daniels continues to write characters who are queer, powerful, and often a little imperfect. I had the opportunity to interview April, which you can read below.

Who are some of your favorite superheroes, fictional or in real life? 

Spider-Man, when done well, is hands down the best superhero. His mix of powers and vulnerabilities is perfectly tuned. His motivations and weaknesses are tightly wound through each other and his supporting cast is balanced and expansive. He is relevant everywhere from street-level crime to cosmic warfare. The rest of us can only hope to create a character so versatile and finely conceived. Also, I just want to take this opportunity to point out that he’s even more interesting if you read him as Jewish and bisexual. No, it’s not cannon, but come on. Come on.

In various interviews, you had spoken about how you had written Danny’s physical transformation as a response to the media’s fixation/ fetishization of the trans (especially trans female) body. Could you expand on this?

Sure. Trans girls have body issues just like cis girls, and I blame ads targeted at young women for this. If, at the start of my awareness that I was trans, I’d had the option to completely rewrite my body and look however I wanted to, I’d have ended up looking something like Danielle–with a form that validates and answers the unrealistic demands of the advertisement agencies. Transition is scary. Transition is hard. Transition seems like it’s going to take forever. And at the end, there’s a big unknown of how we will look, and it’s terrifying. 

Fear of ending up looking “bad” kept me from transitioning as soon as I could have. It has taken me years to understand that feeling good about how I look doesn’t require me to look like the girls in magazines. A big part of my life was spent feeling ugly and unlovable. For this, I blame the beauty and fashion industries, which push a very narrow concept of feminine power. 

This is why one of Danielle’s superpowers is being “super pretty” and also why she is disgusted when she realizes what caused her to make that choice–her perceptions of herself and what she could be were warped by a childhood growing up around ads targeted at creating and exploiting insecurities among women. At first, she’s scared of losing this narrowly-proscribed beauty, but by the end of the book, after she’s seen that her beauty helped her accomplish none of the tasks that mattered, she doesn’t care so much.

Noticing the general landscape of publishing and media, while trans representation seems to be steadily (if slowly) expanding, there continues to be a dearth of rep for trans people who do not identify as straight. Why do you think that is and was Danny, who identifies as a trans lesbian, written as a response to this?

Oh Dreadnought was absolutely a reaction to that state of affairs. There was nothing–nothing–like Dreadnought out there for me when I was young. Anything which featured trans women was a Very Indie And Painfully True kind of affair set in the real world I was trying to escape, or it was lurid cis-gaze bullshit centered on demonizing and exotifying trans women. Or it was both, that was always an option, too. A really popular option, as it turned out. (Transamerica is a terrible movie that should eternally shame everyone involved.) The idea of someone changing their gender presentation was “wacky” or “scary” or “outrageous” but not “empowering” or “beautiful” or “healthy.” Transition was something broken, depraved adults did. It wasn’t something kids daydreamed about–not officially. Not publicly. 

So I sat down to write what I wish I’d found when I was 15: crunchy wish fulfillment that almost completely avoided reckoning with the cruel realities of being trans while also leaving the facts that will inevitably force such a reckoning hanging out clearly in the background of the narrative. Then her parents showed up in Chapter 3 and there was no avoiding them. I realized I’d have to wing it for most of the emotional texture, and just do what felt “right.” It ended up being as much a howl of outrage as it was a celebration.

While the books fit into the superhero narrative of containing dastardly foes with larger than life powers, it seems that the actual villains are those who bear a closer resemblance to people in real life, like the TERFy Graywytch and Danny’s abusive parents. How do you think fiction can reflect the real challenges queer teens go through and inspire them to be their own heroic selves?

Really, I’d like a world where queer kids didn’t need to be heroes. I don’t really know what advice I can give except that it’s a good idea to learn when to run and when to fight and how to tell the difference. If you find yourself doing one all the time, try doing the other.

As a writer what advice would you give to other young queer writers on their own creative journeys?

Write what makes you excited. Don’t worry about breaking radical new ground, just make it as good and satisfying and exciting as you can. If if it doesn’t sell, write something else that also makes you excited. Keep writing different things that make you excited. Sooner or later, someone else will get excited, too. Don’t get too attached to your projects; none of my early work got published. The important thing is that you learn something every time you complete a project. And yes, you need to bring projects to completion even if it looks like nobody is interested in what you’re doing. They’ll become more interested once you’ve completed a few and shown them that you’re the real deal.

Are there any stories you are currently working on and are at liberty to speak about?

Yeah, I’m working on Dreadnought 3. I can’t say much about it, except that I’m determined to stick the landing on this trilogy. There aren’t many new faces in this one, but there are a lot of returning players, some whom have radically new relationships to each other, and some who are in a very different place in their lives than when we last saw them. It’s taking a long time because to tell a coherent story I have to understand how I think the world works, but after the monster’s inauguration, I decided I didn’t really know anything after all. As a consequence it’s taken a while to build back up to a coherent idea of how Danielle’s world functions. Anyhow, totally unrelated, but remember Bosco the superpowered bully? He’s a cop now.

Finally, what are some LGBTQ+ books you would recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich