WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 23LGBTQ Books
has to formulate criteria by which to evaluate submissions.
What belongs and what doesn’t? How focused on identity issues
does a book need to be? What if a book has queer characters but
is written by a straight author? Can a book be, as many said of
Pete Buttigieg, gay but not gay enough?
Candysse Miller, copublisher and director of marketing and
communications at Interlude, an LGBTQ-focused independent
press, takes a generous view of the matter. Many of Interlude’s
books—the publisher mostly releases
general fiction, romance, and YA—
have an “incidental queerness,” Miller
says, meaning they might have queer
characters but might not be focused,
in terms of plot or theme, on queerness
itself. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be
Brokeback Mountain,” she says.
For Len Barot, the founder of Bold
Strokes, which specializes in LGBTQ
fiction of all genres, a book needs to be
“queer focused.” That means that, if
it’s a mystery, “you would anticipate
that the main characters are going to
be queer,” or, if it’s a general fiction
title, that it would deal in some sig-
nificant way with aspects of the queer
community. The publisher does not,
however, make decisions based on the
author’s sexual or gender identity.
Both publishers’ 2020 lists speak to
their LGBTQ-centeredness and to
their genre diversity. Interlude’s forth-
coming titles include Tack & Jibe
(July), a queer romantic comedy by
Lambda finalist Lilah Suzanne, and
several titles from its YA imprint
Duet, among them the novel The
Summer of Everything by Julian Winters
(Sept.), in which a teenager named
Wesley has an as-yet-unrequited crush
on his best friend, Nico. Bold Strokes’
offerings include Drawn, a lesbian
romantic thriller by Carsen Taite
(June); Jane Kolven’s The Holiday
Detour (Sept.), a queer romantic
comedy featuring a nonbinary char-
acter; and The Dubious Gift of Dragon
Blood (Dec.), a gay YA fantasy novel by
J. Marshall Freeman.
To label or not to label
By concentrating on specific margin-
alized communities, publishers can
attract authors and readers who come
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