Writers Who Inspire Us Series: Gay In YA Before It Was Cool

High school. I’d like to say I enjoyed it. Some parts I did, but mostly I just hung out in the library. I think the librarian understood me in some way because she never questioned me spending my second period gym class there. It was an agreement reached with my gym teacher (a wonderful woman who was also my unexpected counselor) that if I dressed out in the first class, I didn’t have to participate in the second. I was more than delighted to shake on it. I would later come to find out much more about the woman behind the counter but that’s a different story. This one begins with me feeling particularly anti-social. I decided to spend my lunch in my sanctuary looking over the shelves. I’d gone through half the bookshelves when I spotted it.

I’ll never forget; The book was on the middle row of shelves, near the end on the second to highest shelf. A skinny book, it was tucked between two much larger novels, which made it easy to overlook if you were just browsing. But I spotted it and pulled out this small hardback. It had a black cover with two girls on the front. One was a very plain Jane cast in blue in what looked like a bad school picture. The other was cast in red with choppy black hair and matching black lipstick. Printed on the cover in handwritten-style text was Define Normal, with normal in quotation marks. The description piqued my interest, so I checked it out.

I enjoyed the unlikely friendship of the two main characters, and decided to investigate the rest of the books listed on the inside cover. So began my introduction to Julie Anne Peters, the first openly gay author I ever read.

I’d never heard of an openly gay author much less one who wrote for people my age. That weekend I found Keeping You A Secret at the mall in a Bookland Bookstore. My parents never paid much attention to what I was reading, so I was able to buy it with an absurd amount of ease. I was not questioning my own sexuality at this point, but was drawn to her work and particularly this book because of the blurb on the back. Funny how things tend to work out like that. Keeping You A Secret was the first story I ever read with gay characters. I lost count of how many times I read it. The hardships scared me; however, I couldn’t get enough of the journey of the main character Holland. This was a story unlike any I’d ever read, a deviation from the boy meets girl hetero romances that I’d never quite related to.

In the back of my mind, I kept this story with me for years. When I finally acknowledged my attraction to women at the age of eighteen, I once again sought out Keeping You A Secret. The story comforted and helped me through the process. Fast forward to present day 33-year-old me and you’ll still find that book on my shelf, along with others of Ms. Peters that had a profound impact on my life.

That’s why it was so easy for me to decide to write about Julie Anne Peters. Akin to most readers, I feel compelled to dive deeper into the person behind my favorite books. This would prove to be more difficult than I imagined. Ms. Peters had since retired from writing – she released her last book in 2014, had taken down her author website, and disappeared from most social media platforms. The scant information I found online was from years past and interviews held no real personal information.

I’ve always been a firm believer in, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” And I’ve been told I have a lot of will in this 4’11” body. Enter my inner Sherlock Holmes. Scratch that. Hercule Poirot. (I’m fonder of Agatha Christie.)

My sleuthing resulted in finding Ms. Peters on one social media platform. As I suppressed a squeal of delight at my success, I got nervous. How could I message this woman who didn’t know me from Adam? What if she said no to interviews? What if she didn’t respond at all? I have a talent for overthinking, but after some gentle encouragement from some friends and my girlfriend, I composed myself and sent a message to Ms. Peters.

Two days later I got a response. She said I could ask her one question. I can honestly tell you that Julie Anne Peters writing me back, even answering one question is still so very strongly reflective of the author inside of her.

So, what did I ask? Well, at first the obvious: What was her coming out story? That’s a loaded question for some, and it was very loaded for her, she said, requiring writing her whole life story. She’d seen so much of LGBTQ+ history. She was a teenager when Stonewall happened. She’d lived through the most hateful and dangerous years of being gay up to the time gay marriage was made legal.

We think of coming out as simply telling our family and friends, but it is so much more. In her own words, “I can tell you that we were in the closet for more than 20 years. The catalyst for visibility and unity was the beating death of Matthew Shepard. Suddenly we sloughed our shame and came out by the hundreds of thousands.” I remember when Matthew Shepard was murdered; I was 11 years old. I’d seen clips of it on the news, but it was hardly a blip on the radar in my small southern town.

What did I really want to know? Julie Anne Peters’ book, Keeping You A Secret, was published in 2003. I researched young adult books published around that time with lesbian protagonists and found… nothing. So why did she write it? Why then? What was her inspiration? Was that too cliché? I formulated my real question and posed it to her. I’ve included her response in its entirety because I feel as a whole it speaks a lot about the woman holding the pen.

I asked:

I guess my second question would be…Writing what you did, knowing it wasn’t done in mainstream publishing at the time much less in YA, did you see it as the bold step it was and cherish the impact you had? The written word is after all a powerful form of expression.

She replied:

Ha!

One day I was talking to my editor, Megan Tingley at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, about another book we were collaborating on, and out of nowhere she asked, “Why don’t you write a lesbian love story?”

I may have fainted. Long, long pause while I hyperventilated.

“Julie?” she said. “Are you there?”

I cried, “Are you freakin’ out of your mind?” (This is probably something you never want to say to your editor.)

She said, “What? What’s the problem?”

What’s the problem? You live in New York City. I live in Colorado. Back then, the state was extremely conservative and red. Yes, I was out to my family and a few friends, but I wasn’t OUT out. How did she even know I was gay?

Another extended silence, and then I said, “Would you buy that?”

She said, “Absolutely.”

“I can’t,” I told her. I mean, it would be such a global outing. Everyone would know. Thanks, but no way, José.

A few weeks later my agent casually asked why I didn’t write a book with a lesbian protagonist. How did she know I was gay? Obviously, she was colluding with Megan.

It’d take a year before I found the courage to sit down and write Keeping You a Secret. That book was the most fun I ever had writing. Of course, I wasn’t going to submit it or anything.

For 18 months I immersed myself in the story and characters, which is how long most books take me to write and revise. No one knew what I was working on. Then, in a moment of lunacy, I boxed up the manuscript and mailed it to my agent.

While I waited to hear from her, fear consumed me. Physically and emotionally I was a wreck. But then I thought, Chill. She’ll reject it. Too controversial. Too explosive. Of course, my editor wouldn’t spend money producing a book with two girls having sex. Who’d buy it? Who’d read it? There was no market for queer literature.

The rest is Herstory.

You ask if I would cherish the impact. One of my worst fears was getting hate mail. On publication day, I curled in a fetal position and suffered a monumental panic attack. For days, I refused to open my email. When I finally mustered the nerve, there were hundreds of emails. I thought, Oh. My. God. Here we go.

Wrong. So wrong. What filled my inbox were letters from young readers. Love letters. Coming out stories. Horrible stories. Wonderful stories. Thank you letters. They kept coming and coming. I printed every one. I answered every one. Yes, there were a few emails from mothers who accused me of turning their daughters into lesbians. Hell, if I knew it was that easy, I’d have written the book years before.

It took time to absorb the significance and power of that book. Today I cherish the impact, and the fact that the success of KYAS gave permission to other authors to write their stories. And for publishers to buy them. It gave me the confidence to write more young adult literature with lesbian characters and themes. Someone once told me I was a pioneer in my field. I can’t think of a higher accomplishment for a writer to achieve.

I admire Julie Anne Peters for taking the chance that she did. Her voice gave so many young readers, and older readers, courage and assurance that they were not alone. The pen is truly mightier than the sword. I hold that close to me. My writing has and will always reflect what I learned from Peters’ books. She tackled subjects that were not seen in mainstream young adult books. I want others who may not feel represented to see themselves in my characters. When people who are so often made to feel like their very existence is a sin are able to find books with characters like them written by authors like them, it can save their lives. I have her books to thank for helping me with the turmoil I experienced coming into myself. Peters gave me hope through her characters that I would be okay as a gay woman, and the best was yet to come. A few authors’ books have made deep impressions on me, but none like her books. They came at the most confusing and self-defining time in my life. For that, Julie Anne Peters will always be my favorite author.

Writers Who Inspire Us Series: Gay In YA Before It Was Cool — Julie Anne Peters LGBTQ+ Author

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