Why Authors Coming Out Is an Incredible Thing, For So Many Reasons

I am so proud to be a part of the YA community, and book Twitter in general. We're passionate about the books we read, and the authors who write them. And we are, for the most part, a hugely supportive and accepting. Being so I'm sure has helped the wonderful authors who have recently come to announce to the world who they really are.

Very recently, and over the past year or so, we have seen authors come out on Twitter and elsewhere online:

• YA author Juno Dawson, formerly James Dawson, came out as transgender back in October 2015. 
• For Queer Romance Month, to talk about his own gender identity, NA (and soon to be YA author!) author Elliot Wake, formerly Leah Raeder, wrote Why I Wrote Cam Girl, then on 1st January, came out as transgender.
• YA author Chelsea M. Cameron also chose the beginning of the year to come out.
• And Ashley Herring Blake, whose debut YA novel Suffer Love is published this year, came out as bisexual last year.

You might think, why is this any of our business? Well, for trans authors, we need to know their change of name in order for fans to buy their future books which will be written under their real name. But otherwise, surely it isn't really something we need to know, like with an author's sexuality, right?

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