Can I pull my teen services librarian card for this one? Okay, but in all seriousness, I do think Albertalli is a good writer and her books are pretty popular with the LGB teens that I work with. (Personally, I enjoy that her books aren’t overly-dramatic coming out stories, but instead feature teens simply falling in love for the first time. They presents LGB romance as normal, not life-altering and angsty. I wish I had books like that when I was a kid.)

However, I do have a problem with people mobbing her for being straight and writing about LGB people until she was backed into this corner. If people are writing about others with care and respect, we shouldn’t denigrate them because they aren’t exactly like their characters. Writing and art should be tools to have a better and more empathetic understanding of our world, not drive identity insanity between us.

That being said, I also don’t think we should be forcing anyone to come out if they aren’t ready just because it suits some folks’ agenda. Most notably, I’m thinking of when Julie Murphy was forced to come out as bi after she wrote Ramona Blue. Murphy actually is bi and was not ready to talk about it publicly. It was rather unfair to her.

Perhaps Albertalli is bi. Perhaps she isn’t. What matters is that no one should be pressuring her to say she is simply because she writes decent novels for young people.