#summer reading

what if an algorithm decided who you were supposed to fall in love with? and what if you were like...nah I'm good?

for this year's queer Summer Reading Challenge, we interviewed Jessica Mary Best, author of You Pierce My Soul, to talk about using dystopian sci-fi to question who gets to define love, growing up bi and on the asexual spectrum, and why queer characters should get to simply exist in a world without their queerness automatically being The Problem:

📚 What was the moment, person, or question that inspired you to write this story?

One major inspiration for this story was the idea of soulmates, and the possibility of a powerful organization (like a government) taking advantage of that kind of oversimplified concept of love, using it to control people. There’s also an element of You Pierce My Soul that stemmed from growing up not realizing I was on the asexual spectrum and bi. I felt like my experiences with romantic feelings and desires were outside the story that was being told about teenagers (and by extension, me), in a somewhat similar way to Zada realizing that she isn’t in love with the person she’s told is her destiny.

📚 If you could leave one note inside every copy of your book for the next LGBTQ+ young person who reads it, what would it say?

I think I would be tempted to write the note that I myself needed to read when I was young, which would be “Never feel ashamed if the ways you experience (or don’t experience) love or desire falls outside of what feels like the mainstream. As long as you aren’t harming anyone, there really is no way to do it wrong. Also, just FYI, asexuality is a spectrum and it’s possible to be on that spectrum without immediately realizing it, hint hint.”

📚 What are three books other than your own centering LGBTQ+ characters that you think every person should read?

I think different people will naturally connect with different stories; I hesitate to say “everyone should read this” about any specific works at all. That said, three books centering LGBTQ+ characters that have made an impact on me for the better are Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (although content warning that On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is decidedly not a YA novel; it contains adult situations).

📚 What inspired you to set the world of You Pierce My Soul in a neo-dystopian city? What elements of the world Zada and Daphne inhabited did you find most challenging, either to write or to personally experience?

Dystopian stories like The Handmaid’s Tale really resonated with me as a teen. Setting the story in a city was partly a matter of convenience because it allowed me to include all the different locations without writing a lot of travel to and from them. The most challenging aspect was incorporating the sci-fi elements in a way that felt grounded and worked with the Regency-inspired style.

📚 I love that we are moving to a place where queerness and queer love are elements of the story, but not out of the ordinary in their existence in the story. What felt important about having queerness be represented in the way it was in the book?

I totally agree! The world of the book is supposed to feel like a dystopia inhabited by people who believe they live in a utopia. If there was no space for queerness in that world, it would transparently be an unsafe place to live for many people. 

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more about the books and summer reading challenge here

and drop your donations to support lgbtq+ youth after every book you read here!

hear us out: the great gatsby...but reimagine it queer, Black, and full of Harlem Renaissance history that got left out of the original. are we into ittt? thought so!

for this year's queer Summer Reading Challenge, we interviewed Ryan Douglass, author of The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay, to talk about reimagining a classic through a queer Black lens, the history of queer artists whose work didn't survive, and why queer joy and community belong alongside stories of historical trauma:

📚 What was the moment, person, or question that inspired you to write this story?

The question that inspired it was, “What parts of history were overlooked in the classic, and what shape would this story take if it filled those parts in?” Centering queer Black people subverts the focus of the original, but it also expands on what’s already baked in. The longing to reach a new tier in society is something that feels integral to the Black American condition. The longing to be in love, to reinvent a past self, and find a renewed sense of belonging somewhere new, feels deeply queer. Once I realized how the original themes coincided with the story I wanted to tell, the story took shape in a beautiful way.

📚 If you could leave one note inside every copy of your book for the next LGBTQ+ young person who reads it, what would it say?

We did something like this in advance copies of the book, and it focused on the idea that queer artists have always existed, but only a select few have surviving work from the time they created in. There were countless painters, writers, musicians, and dancers in the Harlem Renaissance whose work we don’t know because they weren’t given opportunities or the world wasn’t ready for their stories. I wanted The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay to honor the spirits of those individuals as much as possible. If I could sum that up with a short, timelier note, it would be that your work is sacred, even if the world doesn’t recognize it yet.

📚 What are three books other than your own centering LGBTQ+ characters that you think every person should read?

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters.

📚 Retellings are having such an incredible moment in literature right now (and I am a huge fan!). I feel like I haven’t read any retellings inspired by the great American novels. What drew you to The Great Gatsby as a source material, particularly for a queer story?

Nick’s fascination with Jay in the original created fertile ground to plant queer ideas and see how they’d grow, because it already feels homosocial. There’s heavy admiration and longing in their relationship, which is mostly to do with Nick’s interest in the world Gatsby inhabits, but also with the man himself, his mystery and allure. The setting is luxurious and beautiful, so that fits pretty neatly into the romantic. Beneath that, it’s about people trying to find things they hope will complete them because they believe, on some level, they’re not enough on their own. That theme creates a sense of yearning which also feels just right for romance.

📚 Nick’s grief is so intense when he arrives in Harlem and navigates his new environment. Finding Black queer spaces in his new city seems to give him freedom and community. How did you approach balancing Nick’s experience of intense historical trauma with the necessary spaces for queer joy and intimacy he finds?

I think his story would’ve felt one-dimensional had it only involved trauma, so it was important to balance that with levity and paint a realistic portrayal of what being queer was (and is) really like. The bullying that Nick experiences for who he is, the way he takes up space at West Egg, is exactly what pushes him to find sources of joy, community, and safety outside of school, which leads to his growth and freedom. So, one experience couldn’t exist without the other. Ultimately, despite this period of New York being fraught with racism and homophobia, it’s a place where people had no choice but to get very good at turning their pain into beauty, through friendship, romance, and art.

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more about the books and summer reading challenge here

and drop your donations to support lgbtq+ youth after every book you read here!