Pride on the Page

Angst, Bravery, and Compassion:
The ABCs of LGBTQ+ Young Adult Fiction

Moderator: Amy Spalding

Panelists: Lucy Bledsoe, Lio Min and Abdi Nazemian

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of novels for both adults and young people. Her most recent, No Stopping Us Now, is an autobiographical YA novel about love, basketball, and activism. School Library Journal said the novel features “richly developed bold, courageous characters, and raw emotion, deftly capturing…women’s rights in the 1970s.”

Bledsoe’s fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination, a Yaddo Fellowship, the Devil’s Kitchen Fiction Award, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. Her next novel for adults, Tell the Rest, takes on the Christian right and will be out in March 2023. Bledsoe was raised by wolves. 

Lio Min has listened to, played and performed, and written about music for most of their life. Their debut novel Beating Heart Baby (Flatiron Books, 2022) is about boys, bands, Los Angeles, and the process of falling in love with an artist while becoming one yourself, and was praised by the Los Angeles Times as being "alive with ache, grief, hunger, love, pain and awe." They've previously worked as a floral clerk, mailroom coordinator, boba barista, call center operator, and summer camp teacher.

Abdi Nazemian spent his childhood in a series of exciting locations (Tehran, Paris, Toronto, New York), but could usually be found in his bedroom watching old movies and reading. Abdi’s first novel, The Walk-In Closet, was awarded Best Debut at the Lambda Literary Awards. He has written three young adult novels, all published by Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins: The Authentics, Like a Love Story (a Stonewall Honor book and one of Time's 100 Best YA Books Of All Time), and The Chandler Legacies. Abdi has been an executive producer or associate producer on numerous films, including Call Me By Your Name, Little Woods, and Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, their two children and their dog Disco.