A Black teen with a chronic digestive condition writes a love advice column. A bruja falls in love with a trans altar boy. Two Bay Area teen girls meet because of cranky customer service and a disdain for our tech-obsessed world.
Young Adult Anthologies Are Making Space For All Kinds Of Diverse Love Stories
These are the kinds of relationships you can read about in some recently released young adult anthologies:
- Toil & Trouble
- 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft
- Meet Cute: Some People Are Destined to Meet
- Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens
YA anthologies like these are making space for the stories of all kinds of romantic relationships — and that’s a big win for the push for diversity in literature.
Since anthologies by nature include multiple stories by different authors. They allow authors to tell stories and write characters that they might otherwise struggle to get traditionally published.
That’s the reasoning behind the publication of We Need Diverse Books’ anthologies, including Fresh Ink edited by Lamar Giles. It’s a label-defying and genre-bending collection that includes short stories, a graphic novella, and a one-act play.
“The intended impact is to provide glimpses into a number of different experiences in a compact space,” says Lamar Giles. Giles is also a founding member of We Need Diverse Books and the author of several novels. “When We Need Diverse Books set out to do our anthologies, we realized it’s easier to provide one book of 12 stories as opposed to 12 separate books — which is sort of an across the board benefit of anthologies.”
Read more on Young Adult Anthologies on Bustle.
CONNECT WITH KidLit TV
Facebook Group | Facebook Page | Instagram | Newsletter | Pinterest | Twitter | YouTube
Leave Your Comment