Sorry for the awfully corny title, but last year, I held a blog event called Rainbow Reads to showcase books featuring queer (that is, not cisgender – which means identifying wholly with the gender you were assigned at birth – and/or heterosexual – which means solely attracted to people of other genders as identify as themselves) characters; we held discussions and generally celebrated the queer characters we had in YA literature at the time. Why did I run Rainbow Reads?

The short answer: Because, despite Malinda Lo's amazing Pride Months, as far as I knew, it had been a long time since there was a blog-led event about books with queer characters. And I felt we needed to have one.

The long answer: We live in a world where attitudes towards queer people are slowly becoming more positive. Queer people are becoming more visible and books, like some other forms of media, are reflecting that.

I specifically ran Rainbow Reads with the intention of including everyone under the queer umbrella. The button I designed for it was a pile of books featuring a lot of pride flags. In order: bisexuals, asexuals, intersex people, pansexual people, transpeople, genderqueer people, and the rainbow flag for gay and lesbian people and the general queer movement as a whole. That's missing out some flags, like the flag for non-binary people, androgynes, polysexuals... There's a lot of queer identities that exist in addition to those more commonly recognised!
I wanted to draw attention to the fact that in real life and in fiction, there are people who are kind of minority-minorities, subject to more erasure, that a lot of people don't know about. That ignorance can turn easily turn into prejudice from people who don't feel like those labels apply to them, and it also leads to feelings of exclusion in those who do, both of which make for a generally worse world for us all to be in.

I also wanted to show that as a community, we want queer representation in our books. Lots of people wrote guest posts, and I opened up a questionnaire expecting a few lines of response but ended up with 9,000 words-worth of opinions which was amazing to read and exciting to share.

Books are wonderful things. With some lines on a page, we can be transported into other worlds, other experiences, other lives. We can learn lessons about other people, other perspectives, and ourselves. In the few months even since I ran Rainbow Reads, queer characters have gained more visibility than would have been thought possible a few years ago. With the work of authors such as James Dawson, Patrick Ness, Tess Sharpe, Malinda Lo, Laura Lam and so many more, the range of books for queer teens to see people like themselves and for not-queer teens to see people like themselves (because even if characters don't share your gender or sexuality, there's a lot more you can find to identify with in a character: people and characters should not be defined by these things) is increasing, in terms of both number and genre. Rainbow Reads happened to celebrate the selection of books featuring queer characters. And I'm glad to say that that selection is getting bigger and better.

Nina is a teen blogger and Guardian children's books site member. You can read her blog here.