At his Kentucky elementary school, kids taunted Brent on the playground about being gay, whatever that was. By eighth grade, he realized what they meant and came out to a friend — and vice versa.
She was an avid writer, he a voracious reader. They headed to their school library in search of stories that spoke to their lives: gay, gay in the South, gay and fearing stereotypes like "disgusting" and "worthless."
"There were tons of books about gangs and drugs and teen pregnancy and there were no LGBT books. I asked the librarian about it and she was like, ‘This is middle school. I can only have appropriate books here,’" said Brent, now 15 and heading into his sophomore year of senior high.
So they went to their public library, where they discovered plenty of romantic gay steam between covers — for adults. "We weren’t complaining," said Brent, who asked that his last name and hometown not be used.
Turning next to bookstores, they finally found what they’d been looking for — a recent explosion in the publishing world of reads that speak to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning teens.
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