Take a journey through time and genres and discover a past where queer figures live, love and shape the world around them. Seventeen of the best young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens.
From a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in war-torn 1870s Mexico featuring a transgender soldier, to two girls falling in love while mourning the death of Kurt Cobain, forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish convent or an asexual girl discovering her identity amid the 1970s roller-disco scene, All Out tells a diverse range of stories across cultures, time periods and identities, shedding light on an area of history often ignored or forgotten.
DAHLIA ADLER (she/her) is an associate editor of mathematics by day, a blogger for the B&N Teen Blog by night and a writer of kissing books at every spare moment in between. She’s the author of Behind the Scenes, Under the Lights, Just Visiting and the Radleigh University series, and a contributor to the historical young adult anthology The Radical Element. She’s also the founder of LGBTQ Reads, a resource dedicated to promoting LGBTQIAP literature for all ages. She and her overstuffed bookshelves live in New York City.
SARA FARIZAN (she/her) is the daughter of Iranian immigrants and grew up feeling different in her private high school, not only because of her ethnicity but also because of liking girls romantically, her lack of excitement in science and math, and her love of writing plays and short stories. So she came out of the closet in college, realized math and science weren’t so bad (but not for her), and decided she wanted to be a writer. She is an MFA graduate of Lesley University and holds a BA in film and media studies from American University. Sara has been a Hollywood intern, a waitress, a comic book/record store employee, an art magazine blogger, a marketing temp, and an after-school teacher, but above all else she has always been a writer. Her first novel, If You Could Be Mine, was the 2014 Lambda Literary Award winner for youth fiction, and both the Debut Fiction and LGBT Fiction Triangle Award winner. Her second novel, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, was named one of the 2015 Capitol Choices: Noteworthy Books for Children, and was a finalist for Young Adult Fiction in the 2015 Indies Choice Book Awards.
TESSA GRATTON (she/her) has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in gender studies, then settled down in Kansas to tell stories about monsters, magic and kissing. She’s the author of The Blood Journals series and the Gods of New Asgard series, coauthor of YA writing guides The Curiosities and The Anatomy of Curiosity, as well as dozens of short stories available in anthologies and on merryfates.com. Her current projects include Tremontaine at Serial Box Publishing, her adult fantasy debut, The Queens of Innis Lear, from Tor, and YA fantasy Slaughter Moon from McElderry, both available in 2018. Visit her at tessagratton.com.
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON (he/his) is the author of numerous books for young adults, including The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley, which won the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal in the Young Adult category and was named to the ALA’s 2015 Rainbow Book List; the anthology Violent Ends, which received a starred review from VOYA; We Are the Ants, which received five starred reviews and was named a best book of January 2016 by Amazon.com, Kobo.com, Publishers Weekly, and iBooks; and At the Edge of the Universe. He lives in South Florida with his adorably chubby dog, and enjoys Doctor Who, comic books and yelling at the TV. Visit him at shaundavidhutchinson.com.
KODY KEPLINGER (she/her) is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including The DUFF, Lying Out Loud and Run. She is a writing teacher, a fashion and makeup lover, and a cofounder of disabilityinkidlit.com. She lives in NYC with her service dog and two black cats.
MACKENZI LEE (she/her) is a Boston bookseller with a BA in history and an MFA from Simmons College in writing for children and young adults. She is the author of the young adult historical fantasy novels This Monstrous Thing, which won the PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award, and The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. You can find her on Twitter, @themackenzilee, where she curates a weekly storytime about badass women from history you probably didn’t know about but should. She loves Diet Coke, sweater weather and Star Wars. On a perfect day, she can be found enjoying all three.
MALINDA LO (she/her) is the author of several young adult novels, including most recently A Line in the Dark. Her novel Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and was a Kirkus Best Book for Children and Teens. She has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda’s nonfiction has been published by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, the Huffington Post, The Toast, The Horn Book, and AfterEllen. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and their dog. Her website is www.malindalo.com.
NILAH MAGRUDER (she/her) is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. From her beginnings in the woods of Maryland she developed an eternal love for three things: nature, books and animation. She is the author of How to Find a Fox, a picture book. Her young adult webcomic, M.F.K., won the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in 2015 and was published in print by Insight Comics in fall 2017. She has also drawn for Disney and DreamWorks, and written for Marvel. When she is not drawing or writing, Nilah is reading fantasy novels, watching movies, roller-skating and fighting her cat for control of her desk chair.
TEHLOR KAY MEJIA (she/her) is a YA author and poet at home in the wild woods and alpine meadows of southern Oregon. When she’s not writing, you can find her plucking at her guitar, stealing rosemary sprigs from overgrown gardens or trying to make the perfect vegan tamale. Her debut novel, We Set the Dark on Fire, is forthcoming from Katherine Tegan/HarperCollins.
ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE (she/her) was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, raised in the same town as the world’s largest wisteria vine, and taught by her family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds. She is the author of The Weight of Feathers, a finalist for the 2016 William C. Morris Debut award, and 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. Her latest is Wild Beauty, and Blanca & Roja is forthcoming in fall of 2018.
NATALIE C. PARKER (she/her) is the author of Southern Gothic duology Beware the Wild, a 2014 Junior Library Guild Selection, and Behold the Bones (HarperTeen), as well as the editor of the forthcoming YA anthology Three Sides of a Heart: Stories About Love Triangles (HarperTeen). She is the founder of Madcap Retreats, an organization offering a yearly calendar of writing retreats and workshops to aspiring and established writers. In her not-so-spare time, she works at her local university coordinating programs on climate science and Indigenous communities. She holds a BA in English literature and an MA in women’s studies. Though the roots of her family tree are buried deep in southern Mississippi, she lives on the Kansas prairie with her partner and requisite number of beasts.
ALEX SANCHEZ (he/him) is the author of the Rainbow Boys trilogy of teen novels, along with The God Box, Getting It, Boyfriends With Girlfriends and the Lambda Award–winning middle-grade novel So Hard to Say. His novel Bait won the 2009 Florida Book Award Gold Medal for YA fiction. His works have been recognized as an American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults, International Reading Association’s Young Adults’ Choice, New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Winner, and have been multiple Lambda Award finalists. Alex received his master’s degree