In today’s guest post you get to learn a bit about Lisa Jenn Bigelow, the author of middle grade f/f novels Starting From Here and newly released Drum Roll, Please, and about her experience growing up and becoming a writer.
Drum Roll, Please: How an F/F Tween Novel Was Born, Grew Up, and Came Out of the Closet By Lisa Jenn Bigelow
1995
Senior year of high school. After two years of questioning, I’d decided I was gay. Probably. Aside from a trip to the mall with a skater boy, I’d never dated. Everything felt hypothetical.
I’d scoured libraries and bookstores for queer books. (This was before I had Internet access.) Those I found were mostly about gay men, mostly about AIDS. Nothing for teens. There was a lesbian bookstore downtown. I’d read about it in the paper, seen its rainbow flag flying. I mustered the nerve to go in. There, I found a flyer for an LGBTQ teen support group. The group had its own library, packed into a Styrofoam picnic cooler. There was Annie on My Mind, by Nancy Garden. Tales from the Closet, by Ivan Velez, Jr. Queer YA existed after all.
I wish I’d discovered these books earlier, before I started to question myself. I wish there had been more of them. I wish they’d all had happy, or at least hopeful, endings. My life today is still shaped by those early years of feeling alone, afraid, and inferior. I was fortunate to feel confident of my parents’ and closest friends’ support, whenever I came out. But school was a homophobic environment. The local paper regularly printed homophobic letters to the editor.
Day after day, the headlines debated whether gay people deserved the same rights as straight people. President Clinton passed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. Homosexuality was technically a crime in many states.
I didn’t think I’d ever be allowed to marry. I didn’t think I could ever have children. But those books in the cooler were a ray of hope.
knitting in the dark 