{"id":4057,"date":"2019-02-27T08:38:43","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T13:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/?p=4057"},"modified":"2019-02-11T08:40:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T13:40:04","slug":"interview-with-stonewall-winner-jessica-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/archives\/4057","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Stonewall Winner Jessica Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On January 28th, 2019 the Youth Media Awards were held in Seattle\nduring the 2019 ALA Midwinter Meeting. One of the awards announced was the\nStonewall Book Award – Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children?s\n& Young Adult Literature Award. Author Jessica Love won for her picture\nbook Julian is a Mermaid.<\/em> Jessica was kind enough to answer a few\nquestions about receiving her phone call from the committee and more! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me about getting that phone call. What were you doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was unpacking. My fianc? and I were in the process of moving\napartments, and our new place was not in the kind of shape we had hoped. We\nwere having a real cold snap in New York, and the new building hasn’t been\nparticularly well maintained and an icy wind was blowing through the walls. We\nwere trying to figure out how to patch up the walls when I got the call. After\nthat I would have been happy to sleep in a refrigerator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you feel? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cannot explain with adequate force the feeling you have, as an\nartist, when you feel you have made something that has found its audience. Juli?n\nis a Mermaid is my first book–I’ve been an actor for the last 13 years. And in\nthe theater I had a growing feeling that the work we were doing didn’t actually\nmatter to anyone. Or at least, the people for whom it might matter weren’t\ncoming to the theater. It was a creeping feeling of creative impotence, of\nwriting on water. So to go from that feeling to having Juli?n\nactually reaching the people I made it for, and having an impact on them…I\ndon’t know how to describe it. It’s as gratifying a feeling as an artist gets\nto have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why was it important to you to include LGBTQIA issues and\/or\ncharacters in your book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel like there are many ways to answer this question. Part of\nit is that I think there is an essential lesson in courage and self-knowledge\nthat we can all take from the LGBTQIA community. I have a profound respect for\nthe strength of character it requires for a member of the LGBTQIA community to\njust be themselves in this world, especially a young person. On a more personal\nlevel, I have a friend, a trans man, who waited longer than he wanted to to\ntransition and start living his life as the man he knew himself to be. I wanted\nto make a story that provided a little bit of ballast for kids who might be\nstruggling to break out of their own chrysalises. I wanted to leave this book\nas a kind of comfort station, where they might stop and replenish their\nspirits, then continue their journey. I made it in the spirit of a small gift\nto the LGBTQIA community, as a gesture of thanks for all the gifts that\ncommunity has given to the human race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to you to be recognized for a Stonewall\nAward? Tell me about your next book? Anything else to add?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be recognized for a Stonewall Award is a kind of direct\ngratification I never really expected to get in my life. What it means to me,\nquite simply, is that my work worked.  It\nreached the people I made it for, and it meant something to them. I don’t think\nit gets better than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 28th, 2019 the Youth Media Awards were held in Seattle during the 2019 ALA Midwinter Meeting. One of the awards announced was the Stonewall Book Award – Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children?s & Young Adult Literature Award. Author Jessica Love won for her picture book Julian is a Mermaid. Jessica was kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":4058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-midwinter-meetings","category-stonewall-book-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}