There are so many benefits to reading non-fiction to inform your fiction writing. Not only is history edifying, allowing us to ensure that we’re crafting stories that are accurate and plausible, but reading non-fiction is also a great way to expose ourselves to new ideas.

If you want to craft characters that are true to the time you’re writing in, develop logical and historical backstories and sub-plots for your main narrative, and take care to craft accurate representation, using accurate terminology, for diverse and under-represented people, reading history is an important foundation.

Added benefit: If you’re ever stuck for ideas, reading non-fiction can expose you to something—some time, person, place, or event—that you find incredibly fascinating and might want to explore further in your fiction.

For writers of LGBTQ+ fiction, being historically informed is especially important. First, it wasn’t until about the middle of the twentieth century that openly gay and lesbian writers were publishing openly gay and lesbian stories. Some of these texts did exist before the 1950s, but they were often printed with smaller presses and did not receive much publicity (or the publicity they did receive was not particularly kind). This means that contemporary writers who want to fill in the gaps of historical narrative also need to go to history books and primary source material to enter the conversation.

In addition, one aspect of being part of the LGBTQ+ community is that language is necessarily fluid and ever-evolving. This means a story set in the 1990s might use very different language and concepts than one set in 2021, not to mention one set in 1850!

Finally, as a marginalized community internationally, the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals in any place and at any point in time could be vastly different. Two lesbian women—or two asexual non-binary persons, or two transgender men—living in different countries at the same time, or in the same country at different times, might have experienced incredibly different lives, threats, and opportunities. History helps us navigate what would be true, possible, and probable for our characters.

If you are an LGBTQ+ writer or a writer crafting LGBTQ+ stories, there are some excellent texts in circulation that can help you broaden your understanding of and appreciation for LGBTQ+ history. Here are some suggestions for where to begin.

Recommended LGBTQ+ History Reading

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 by George Chauncey 

Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, this book is a fascinating portrait of a gay world that is not supposed to have existed.

A History of Bisexuality by Steven Angelides 

Why is bisexuality the object of such skepticism? Why do sexologists steer clear of it in their research? Why has bisexuality, in stark contrast to homosexuality, only recently emerged as a nascent political and cultural identity? Bisexuality has been rendered as mostly irrelevant to the history, theory, and politics of sexuality. 

With A History of Bisexuality, Steven Angelides explores the reasons and invites us to rethink our preconceptions about sexual identity. Retracing the evolution of sexology, and revisiting modern epistemological categories of sexuality in psychoanalysis, gay liberation, social constructionism, queer theory, biology, and human genetics, Angelides argues that bisexuality has historically functioned as the structural other to sexual identity itself, undermining assumptions about heterosexuality and homosexuality.

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America by Margot Canaday

The Straight State is perhaps the most expansive study of the federal regulation of homosexuality yet written. Unearthing startling evidence from the National Archives, Margot Canaday shows how the state systematically came to penalize homosexuality, giving rise to a regime of second-class citizenship that sexual minorities still live under today.

How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States by Joanne J. Meyerowitz 

From early twentieth-century sex experiments in Europe, to the saga of Christine Jorgensen, whose sex-change surgery made headlines in 1952, to today’s growing transgender movement, Meyerowitz gives us the first serious history of transsexuality. She focuses on the stories of transsexual men and women themselves, as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, feminists, and gay liberationists, as they debated the big questions of medical ethics, nature versus nurture, self and society, and the scope of human rights.

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson 

Historian David K. Johnson here relates the frightening, untold story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a “Lavender Scare” more vehement and long-lasting than McCarthy’s Red Scare. 

Relying on newly declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in New Deal-era Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where thousands of Americans were questioned about their sex lives. The homosexual purges ended promising careers, ruined lives, and pushed many to suicide. But, as Johnson also shows, the purges brought victims together to protest their treatment, helping launch a new civil rights struggle.

Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America by Christopher Bram 

In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life: Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation’s imagination; Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and histor;. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater; James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic; Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist; and the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture. 

Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians by Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons 

Drawing upon untouched archives of documents and photographs and over 200 new interviews, Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons chart L.A.’s unique gay history, from the first missionary encounters with Native American cross-gendered “two spirits” to cross-dressing frontier women in search of their fortunes; from the bohemian freedom of early Hollywood to the explosion of gay life during World War II to the underground radicalism sparked by the 1950s blacklist; from the 1960s gay liberation movement to the creation of gay marketing in the 1990s. 

Faderman and Timmons show how geography, economic opportunity, and a constant influx of new people created a city that was more compatible to gay life than any other in America. Combining broad historical scope with deftly wrought stories of real people, from the Hollywood sound stage to the barrio, Gay L.A. is American social history at its best.

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele 

Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender, and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology, and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.

Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II by Allan Bérubé 

During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding anti-homosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation—not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs’ wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fought—one for America and another as homosexuals within the military.

Colonialism and Homosexuality by Robert Aldrich 

Colonialism and Homosexuality is a thorough investigation of the connections of homosexuality and imperialism from the late 1800s—the era of “new imperialism”—until the era of decolonization. Robert Aldrich reconstructs the context of several liaisons, including those of famous men such as Cecil Rhodes, E.M. Forster, or Andre Gide, and the historical situations which produced both the Europeans and their non-Western lovers. Each of the case-studies is a micro-history of a particular colonial situation, a sexual encounter, and its wider implications for cultural and political life. Students both of colonial history and of gender and queer studies will find this an informative read.

Other Recommendations: Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman; When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan; The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini; The Wedding Heard ‘Round the World by Michael McConnel and Jack Baker; The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman; Charity & Sylvia by Rachel Hope Cleves; Beyond Magenta by Susan Kulin; A View from the Bottom by Tan Hoang Nguyen; Queer Diasporas edited by Cindy Patton and Benigno Sanchez-Eppler.

Thinking About It

Where do you go when you’re stuck with ideas for your fiction? How do you engage in the process of literary research—ensuring that your depictions of times and places, and descriptions of people, are accurate? Is it true that the “best writers are readers”? 

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft.

You can find Adam on his website or follow him on Twitter.

The post Why LGBTQ+ Fiction Writers Need to Read LGBTQ+ History appeared first on DIY MFA.

Let’s consider, for example, Greek mythology. These stories were told and passed on orally at first, or presented on stage, but epic poetry has a narrative and acts much like traditional storytelling in prose form. While there may not be queer love of the kind we would recognize today, much because language and ideas, influenced as they are by time and culture, do not equate in retrospect, there are nevertheless numerous explorations of nontraditional experiences surrounding gender and sexuality. Some of these, like the stories of Achilles and Patroclus, were considered critically at the time (by the likes of Plato, no less!) and continue to be attractive today (See: Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles).

We can jump forward in time a bit and think of similar gender play or same-sex relationships in the works of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Jump ahead a bit more and we find Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) and George Sylvester Viereck’s The House of the Vampire (1924).

What each of these stories has in common is an interest in the fantastical. To varying degrees, the characters and plots, even those steeped in historical persons and events, err toward the highly imaginative. These writers reconsider what is, or was, possible in the story worlds they created. Whether this was to create a world that would allow for the open portrayal of non-traditional individuals and romances, or to encourage readers to expand their intellectual or emotional horizons, or all of this, the fact is that LGBTQ stories and the fantasy genre have become wonderful partners.

Let’s consider four ways that an LGBTQ fantasy world has been successfully created.

Independent Fantasy World

When we think of the independent fantasy world in literature, examples include those such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth from The Lord of the Rings and the world created by R.A. Salvatore in his Crimson Shadow trilogy. These are self-contained fantasy worlds separate from what readers would recognize as reality, with little or no connections in time, place, history, or culture. There is also no overlap between the realistic contemporary world a reader might be familiar with and the fantasy world also taking place as a part of, or in relation to, that world.

An exemplary LGBTQ series that makes use of this device is Mercedes Lackey’s The Last-Herald Mage trilogy. Published between 1989 and 1990, these three novels tell the story of Vanyel, an outcast elder son destined for greatness, though he doesn’t know it, and destined to disappoint his royal father, which is less surprising. The story is set in a world called Valdemar, where magic is common but not entirely trusted. What’s truly groundbreaking about this high fantasy trilogy is its publication at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Mercedes Lackey adds an author’s note to the 2016 omnibus edition that explains the conversations she had with her agent about the perils of publishing fantasy novels with a gay protagonist at this time. As she notes, they did it anyway, and readers around the world have been grateful ever since.

Directly Integrated Fantasy World

A directly integrated fantasy world is one where the magical and the realistic worlds are one and the same. There is no separation between the fantasy elements unfolding in the story and the ordinary world which we would recognize and in which these extraordinary events take place. An example of such a fantasy world might remind us of magical realism, where most of the plot seems plausible but sometimes something odd or inexplicable, even impossible, happens. If we take that one step further, we get a directly integrated fantasy world, where the ordinary and the extraordinary are equals. Think of, for example, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series.

An example of this kind of story in the LGBTQ+ sphere is Andrew Eliopoulos’s The Fascinators (2020). The story is set in an ordinary small town in the ordinary United States of America. It’s the kind of place anyone familiar with suburbia might recognize. And yet, driving the story are a group of teenagers who happen to have magical abilities. In this world, “magic just happens.” Much like skills in art, music, or sports, some people have the talent and the ability to grow it, and others do not. What is interesting about Eliopoulos’s approach is that, in the story world he creates, magic is a natural ability that is frowned upon by many. In this way, the author sets up a kind of allegory which, I think, is meant to suggest the illogic in hating a person for who they are. Another great example of this approach is Adam Silvera’s Infinity Cycle.

Indirectly Integrated Fantasy World

The indirectly integrated fantasy world is like the directly integrated world, except there is some distance created between what happens on the magical side of things and what happens in the realistic world. A classic example is, of course, Harry Potter, where all characters inhabit the same world, technically, and it’s a world with which most readers will be familiar; and yet, there’s a clear and necessitated distinction, a figurative line drawn between those living in the magical world and those living in what J.K. Rowling infamously calls the “muggle” world.

In LGBTQ+ fantasy fiction, this approach is rather popular, possibly because it allows writers to play off what is known, shared, and in a way non-threatening while also exploring what is different, unique, and extraordinary. Examples of these kinds of LGBTQ+ stories include Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On (2015) and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (2009). Both stories focus on young people—high school-aged in Rowell but college-aged in Grossman—who are exploring their magical abilities in magical schools that are set apart from the everyday, ordinary world. So, characters might leave home to visit non-magical family, for example, or keep a job in the ordinary world, all of which remains separate from their magical life.

Parallel Fantasy World

The parallel fantasy world is the mode we might be familiar with from a series like C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. In this construction, we find that the ordinary world and the extraordinary world are separate but crossable. In other words, the two are kept distinct more fully than they would be in an indirectly integrated fantasy world. It takes some effort for the main character(s) to move from their known world (which is usually similar to the readers’ known world) into the other, fantastical world.

In LGBTQ+ literature, this often appears in stories containing parallel universes (hence the name I’ve given it!) In adult fiction, for example, we might think of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy. The first book introduces us to a cast of characters, one of whom is bisexual, that can traverse four distinct Londons, one of which is like the reader’s own non-magical version. Some of these worlds are in chaos, but one thing Schwab does beautifully is to introduce her queer character’s sexuality with complete nonchalance. It’s a refreshing bit of, “this is no big deal” in a genre that is sometimes too on-the-nose about sexuality and in a specific fantasy world that is filled with action and explosive moments. Another excellent example from the Young Adult genre is Corinne Duyvis’s Otherbound (2014), in which a boy from contemporary Arizona can see into, and eventually control, the mind of a girl living in another world.

Thinking About It

In your reading, have you explored LGBTQ+ fantasy specifically? What have you noticed about the fantasy worlds themselves? Do they fit any of these patterns?

In your writing, are you working on fantasy fiction with gender or sexually diverse characters? What kind of story world construction seems most practical to your plot(s)?

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft.

The post The Magic of Queer Fantasy appeared first on DIY MFA.

Defining LGBTQ+ Literature

LGBTQ+ literature, especially young adult fiction, has boomed in popularity. But what is LGBTQ+ literature? How can we define something that spans all genres, modes, styles, and ages?

In 2019, I published a book titled From A Whisper to A Riot: The Gay Writers Who Crafted an American Literature Tradition. After years of research, reading dozens upon dozens of LGBTQ+ works by LGBTQ+ writers, I came up with four common traits that help us truly understand how to read—and write—LGBTQ+ stories. Those traits are: Setting; Engaging with Stereotypes; Coded Communication; and Issues of Gender & Sexuality.  

It’s a good idea for writers to know their history and for columnists to be transparent about the way they approach their topics. Since my future columns might address one or more of these four concerns, and because I believe an interest in LGBTQ+ literature should be grounded in textual and cultural awareness, I want to take this opportunity to outline these four concepts.

Setting: Time and Place

An important feature for LGBTQ+ texts that were written and published in the U.S. before the Stonewall Riots of 1969—and related legal judgements surrounding “obscene” publications—was that the stories were often set in locations that allowed the reader to “distance” herself from it. This physical distance between the reader and the story provided some psychological comfort in that it invited the reader to witness a kind of story that “couldn’t happen here,” and so it was unthreatening.

Similarly, LGBTQ+ writers created that same sense of distance by writing stories that took place in earlier time periods. This includes mid-century novels that took place before World War I, for example, or those that were set in the Renaissance or in Ancient Greece. Just as physical distance created a kind of spatial buffer between the reader and the provocative plot, so too did temporal distance. A reader could enjoy the story, even discuss it with friends, because its contents took place in a time long gone.

Today, writers of LGBTQ+ fiction often use the same devices, distancing their story by time or place. They manifest in new ways, however, such as writers who look back on the times of shock “therapy” to “cure” homosexuality, or who revisit the AIDS crisis, or who write about what it was like for a queer kid growing up in the rural south to finally move to a big city up north. In effect, LGBTQ+ writers are still very much interested in where and when their stories take place and continue to make these an important part of the genre.

Engaging with LGBTQ+ Stereotypes

An unfortunate and harmful aspect of LGBTQ+ literature is its penchant for enabling and creating stereotypes. These range from what it means to be gay, what homosexuals look or act like, and even what is likely to happen to a gay person—a shared fate. In a disturbing number of LGBTQ+ texts, for example, the gay male character, whether he is the main character or a supporting one, ends up dead, usually by committing suicide or, post-AIDS crisis, of disease. When we think of literature as a socio-cultural conversation, this repeated imagery has seriously painful consequences. 

Fortunately, some of the historical texts, those written before Stonewall, offer alternative perspectives, many of them even falling into that “happily ever after” trope. It’s refreshing to see texts written as early as the 1920s offering their gay characters opportunities at a good life, fulfilling relationships, and health and longevity. But for those who, like me, grew up in the wake of the AIDS crisis and the stories that came out of it, it might be a surprise to know they exist.

Contemporary readers and writers are treated to a much wider range of complex stories that deal with the roundness of human experience. Today, a “good” LGBTQ+ novel treats its characters as fully human and their sexuality as one element of that life experience. We continue to note some trends, though, in stereotypes surrounding gender expression, mental health, and family issues. A writer of LGBTQ+ stories, whether identifying as LGBTQ+ themselves or not, should read widely and take note of common stereotypes, employ sensitivity readers liberally, and be certain that s/he is treating their characters as human first.

LGBTQ+ Coded Communication

One of the more entertaining elements of LGBTQ+ reading and writing is engaging with the many codes and subtle hints that writers use to share the LGBTQ+ experience and to create community. In early texts, and to some extent the contemporary ones, these codes include such language as characters who are seeking “sisterhood,” “brotherhood” or “camaraderie,” or describing gay characters as “sensitive,” “artistic,” or even “womanly.” Many characters are described as being “in sympathy” and there are often historical or cultural references, to Ancient Greece, for example, or to (in)famously queer figures like Oscar Wilde.

Codes can quickly become tired tropes and stereotypes if the writer is not careful. Certainly, in the original conversations happening in the early 1900s, writers did not have much choice; to speak openly about homosexuality was not just to ensure your work wouldn’t be published, but it was to invite criminal prosecution and social ostracization. Today, in most places, the likelihood of the latter situations occurring is much reduced. Still, codes can be helpful as literary devices.

In popular LGBTQ+ literature today, many of the ancient references have been replaced by those in pop culture. Characters who are sexually or gender diverse might express interest in figures like David Bowie, Prince, Madonna, or Dolly Parton. Similarly, there are often references to sub-cultures, particular kinds of films and music scenes, which help to create that same atmosphere of community that the earliest LGBTQ+ writers were designing well before anyone could have the gay conversation out loud.

Gender & Sexuality

Lastly, there have been and continue to be issues for writers of LGBTQ+ stories in distinguishing between gender and sexuality. In early works, and today, writers often default(ed) to writing lesbian characters as explicitly and exclusively “butch,” and gay men as explicitly and exclusively “feminine.” In romance, the “masculine” partner is usually the “dominant” partner, and the “feminine” partner is usually the “submissive” one. Although most of us now know that sexuality and gender expression are not one and the same, and that everyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum exists also along the non-parallel spectrum of gender identity, writers often continue to perpetuate the idea of a common denominator. We don’t need these boxes; they reinforce something that isn’t true, and our LGBTQ+ stories will continue to grow in depth, reality, and diversity if we commit to writing characters who are uniquely individual, rather than defaulting to narrow assumptions.

Thinking About It

If you are an LGBTQ+ reader or writer, can you think about a favorite LGBTQ+ character from literature (whether a novel, a play, or a short story) who was effective because they didn’t seem to fit the mold? Why did that character stand out? How did the author do it? 

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft. 

The post What Is LGBTQ+ Literature? appeared first on DIY MFA.

The above is obvious, but there are huge challenges in writing a character that readers identify with, can’t forget, and miss when they finish reading the piece—whatever their sexuality/identity. So let’s jump in at the deep end:

1) Dig Deeper to Avoid Stereotypes

In writing your characters—whether you belong to the same sexual/gender identity or not—avoid stereotypes, tired devices, conventional narratives. Vast and disparate groups of LGBTQ+ people are corralled into the narrowest of descriptions by the narrowest of minds: sad and despairing, lonely victims; hysterical and giddy; whatever. Similarly unimaginative and ignorant stereotypes are applied to every race, ethnicity, and religion on the planet, too. Reject them all and start fresh.

If you rely upon or even step into these well-worn tropes for an LGBTQ+ character (an editor accidentally added the word limp to the description of my deceased, gay male character’s wrist—I deleted it), you’ll pen a cartoon, stopping at one dimension, and that makes you a poor writer, whatever your own identity. For inspiration and instruction, read literature.

2) Read Literature

Undoubtedly, you already read literature to nurture your fiction writing. For writers of LGBTQ+ characters, reading literature with LGBTQ+ characters and experiences—queer literature—is key. Great writers have written complex gay and lesbian characters in the past, and fresh voices are writing flesh and blood LGBTQ+ characters now.

Here are two links to lists of contemporary works, for readers of different ages, in every genre, from writers of all identities, by authors from all over the world, and every experience and viewpoint:

The Best of Trans Literature by Susan Stryker

The Top 10 Queer Books of 2018 by Them Magazine

Don’t forget to go back in time, too, even if you’ve read these authors before. Explore lesbian and gay themes in the works of: James Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, Emma Donoghue, E.M. Forster, Patricia Highsmith, Christopher Isherwood, Armistead Maupin, Alice Walker, Sarah Waters, Oscar Wilde, Jeanette Winterson, Virginia Woolf and many more (other than as a curiosity, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well Of Loneliness won’t help):

The Best 25 LGBT Novels of All Time — The Advocate

3) Gain Inspiration Without Breaking A Sweat

Contemporary movies and TV series are stepping up to the plate (finally), such as Orange Is The New Black, in which a trans woman actor plays a trans woman with depth. Google contemporary TV series and movie LGBTQ+ characters worth viewing, in the eyes of critics and community members. Don’t stop at TV series and movies, because no matter how well written and portrayed, you must add more to your arsenal as a writer—read good fiction.

4) Consider Your Limitations

If you’ve only met trans people casually or not at all, then it’s doubtful you’ve gained enough knowledge about the trans experience to write a flesh and blood character. In that case, you should not tackle a major trans character, or even a secondary trans character. Write what you know—get the knowledge, or change course on the character’s identity to include what you want to write.

5) Write It

What about crisscrossing sexual and gender identities between writer and fictional character? Should a woman writer attempt a gay male character? Hanya Yanagihara wrote her best-selling novel, A Little Life, centered on four gay men. Should a male writer create lesbian characters? Should men write women protagonists, as they have with self-annointed authority since time immemorial? Michael Cunningham wrote about lesbians in The Hours, and Colm Tóibín, a gay man, created heterosexual women protagonists in Brooklyn and Nora Webster. All of these novels are about much more than their characters’ genders and sexual identities, so does it matter that the authors don’t share the identities of their characters? Overwhelmingly, critics and readers alike applaud the novels listed above—and while reactions are more mixed among community members, they are widely read, their characters enjoyed.

Still, there’s good reason to read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando—her own identity fantasy portrayed in her own wonderful writing—at least in addition to Michael Cunningham’s version of her life. The same can be said for reading gay male authors writing about gay men, women about women, trans authors writing trans characters—but all fiction falls into some degree of verisimilitude—it’s up to the reader to decide the level of success the author has achieved.

The late Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise did not spell out for the reader which characters were white and which were black. She wanted “to dissuade people from reading literature in that way. Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It’s real information, but it tells you next to nothing.”

Is the same true for sexual and gender identities? It’s real information about a person and it is defining—if only in the way the world reacts to the person’s identity—but it never captures the sum total of anyone’s parts, it never speaks for the whole of the person.

Writing is above all about taking chances. Whether or not you share the same sexuality or gender identity as your character, go for it. If you think you have the passion, skill, knowledge, empathy, imagination, and love to pull off a complex, flesh and blood character, one who makes all readers feel the living being in the fiction, whatever the character’s sexuality/gender identity or yours—write it—write the character and find out.

To quote the late, great Toni Morrison again, “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”

Constance Emmett’s debut historical/LGQ novel, Heroine Of Her Own Life, published by Next Chapter, begins shipping from Amazon at the end of August. She writes in an aerie-like office in the beautiful foothills of the Massachusetts Berkshires, where she lives with her wife and their dog. Her non-fiction is posted on her blog, or connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post #5onFri: Five Tips for Writing Complex, Flesh and Blood LGBTQ+ Characters appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I am so excited to have Camille Perri on the show!

Camille is an author who has also worked in numerous book related fields.

She has been a books editor for both Cosmopolitan and Esquire, a ghostwriter, and a reference librarian. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, The Assistants, was released in May of 2016 and was said to have captured the spirit of a generation: Millennials encumbered by student debt, struggling to rise through the ranks of their chosen careers, and completely fed up with the system.

Camille’s newly released second novel, When Katie Met Cassidy, is a bit of a divergence from her first, but still holds the same wry humor and discerning eye she has become known for. This time she turns those talents to questions of gender, representation, and sexuality in an exhilarating romantic comedy with a twist: A “girl meets girl” love story between two very different women.

So listen in as Camille and I chat about this awesome book, and how writing a fun read can be the greatest act of resistance.

In this episode Camille and I discuss:

• Using alternating point of view to get readers inside all of your characters’ heads.
• The importance of worldbuilding in contemporary fiction.
• Showing the fun side of the queer community.
• Subtle activism in romantic comedies.
• Why you can make a difference with your writing without being political.

Plus, Camille’s #1 tip for writers.

About Camille Perri

Camille Perri is the author of The Assistants, and has worked as a books editor for Cosmopolitan and Esquire. She has also been a ghostwriter of young adult novels and a reference librarian. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University, where she majored in English and gender and sexuality studies, and a masters of Library Science degree from Queens College. Camille now lives in Brooklyn with her partner.

Her latest novel, the romantic comedy When Katie Met Cassidy, is now available.

To learn more about Camille check out her author profile at www.penguinrandomhouse.com/camille-perri

When Katie Met Cassidy

When it comes to Cassidy, Katie can’t think straight.

Katie Daniels, a twenty-eight-year-old Kentucky transplant with a strong set of traditional values, has just been dumped by her fiancé when she finds herself seated across a negotiating table from native New Yorker Cassidy Price, a sexy, self-assured woman wearing a man’s suit. At first neither of them knows what to make of the other, but soon their undeniable connection will bring into question everything each of them thought they knew about sex and love.

This romantic comedy is about gender and sexuality, and the importance of figuring out who we are in order to go after what we truly want. It’s also a portrait of a high-drama subculture where barrooms may as well be bedrooms, and loyal friends fill in the spaces absent families leave behind. Katie’s glimpse into this wild yet fiercely tightknit community begins to alter not only how she sees the larger world, but also where exactly she fits in.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 226

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 226: The Girl Meets Girl Romantic Comedy — Interview with Camille Perri appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I have the pleasure of interview award-winning author Sebastian Barry, about his latest book Days Without End.

Sebastian Barry is the author of seven novels, including A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture (now a major motion picture starring Rooney Mara and Vanessa Redgrave). He has won the Costa Book of the Year Award, the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the Walter Scott Prize. His work has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Ireland.

Days Without End is a historical novel set during the Indian Wars in the American west, and the Civil War, about two young men who are brothers in arms and also lovers. It’s a story where the gay relationship is the only consistently joyful thing against the otherwise bleak background of war, genocide and the American empire.

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In this episode we discuss:

• Recognizing how your real life becomes infused in your best writing.
• Shaking off the self-consciousness of writing.
• Being aware of what’s not in the books you’re reading and striving to create what’s not “out there.”

Plus, Sebastian’s #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Sebastian Barry is the author of seven novels, including A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture (now a major motion picture starring Rooney Mara and Vanessa Redgrave). He has won the Costa Book of the Year Award, the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the Walter Scott Prize. His work has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Ireland.

Days Without End

Days without End is inspired by and dedicated to Barry’s son, who came out as gay recently and on whose behalf Barry advocated for LGBT marriage rights during the Irish marriage referendum. The letter he wrote for the Irish Times on the subject went viral, and was read aloud in the Irish and Australian parliaments. The character of John Cole is a portrait of his son Toby’s boyfriend, Jack.

Writing gay love was new territory for Barry, and part of his historical research for the novel was looking into the (elusive) history of gay life during that time through primary sources. There is a seriously researched and utterly moving history of proto drag on the frontier. John and Thomas, the main characters, first find work crossdressing, working as dance partners in saloons for lonely miners in frontier towns. Barry takes on the psychology of drag from Thomas’ point of view—what his costumes mean to his identity, which is split between his occupation as a soldier and the secret family he has built with John.

Days Without End shifts the narrow expectations of what “masculine” literature can be and do. The book is in dialogue with and in some ways a rebuttal to Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, in that the gay relationship is the only consistently joyful thing in otherwise bleak novel about genocide and American empire, rather than the source of anguish and frustration it is in Proulx’s novel. With John and Thomas, Barry wanted to portray the joy that he observes in his son’s relationship with his boyfriend, rather than shame and persecution.

In Days Without End, Thomas McNulty, a “wren-sized” young man barely seventeen and an Irish refugee of the Great Famine, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s with his brother in arms John Cole. The two friends are sent to fight in the Indian Wars against the Sioux and Yurok, and ultimately in the Civil War. Fans of Sebastian Barry’s subtly interconnected novels will rediscover the McNulty family—based on members of Barry’s own family—in the New World, as Thomas McNulty travels from the contested frontier plains of Wyoming, to the Union battlegrounds of Virginia and Maryland, to the starving remains of scorched earth towns in Tennessee.

Days Without End is a powerful literary portrait of a time when Americans were pitted against Americans in bloody struggles fought to define the borders and identity of the nation. Barry writes of this period as it was experienced by common soldiers: men who did not determine or even necessarily understand the wars they fought, but who fought anyway, merely to survive them. Not just a war novel, Days Without End is also a poignant love story, about two men and the unlikely family they form with a young Sioux girl, Winona.

Link to Episode 133

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 133: Tell Meaningful Stories — Interview with Sebastian Barry appeared first on DIY MFA.