Alaina Leary

If you’re not currently poor, low-income, or broke, here’s what you can do this summer to support your friends and family members who might be.

I told Winnie that I was queer before I told anyone human—late at night, in my room, after writing it down in my journal. “You won’t stop loving me if I’m gay, will you?” I asked him. He replied with his signature loud meow.

Diverse genre fiction shares a lot in common with diverse literature, in that a lot of the challenges are the same. We still have to ask a lot of questions about who gets to tell what stories, what kinds of books and authors are published, what it means to get it right, and who is on staff at the publishing houses that produce genre fiction.

"Writing about trauma or difficult experiences doesn’t repair that trauma,” said Melanie. “It doesn’t make it go away. But I kept hearing what a transformative thing it was for [the memoirists] to shape these stories into something that they could be proud of.”

The education system isn’t designed for students like me. From as early as preschool up through my master’s degree, I struggled in a traditional classroom setting for a few reasons, and needed to adapt my own methods of surviving education.

The best part about Halloween is having free rein to dress a little whimsically and spooky all month long. Let's all dress like every day is Halloween!

I didn't use the word "asexual" until I was a senior in college. I didn't so much use the word as slur it, in between a long drunken ramble, to my girlfriend and our best friend in our apartment's small kitchen.

September, for the first time in many years, wasn’t the start of any new beginnings. I’ve been in some form of school — general education in public schools, then an undergraduate degree, and then a graduate degree — since I was in preschool.

Remembering to do things isn’t exactly my strong suit, so I need to actively plan so that my partner isn’t the only one making lists, cleaning the dishes, and checking that our bills are paid on time.

All I wanted, most days, was a cute apartment with big windows, sheer curtains billowing in the breeze, where I could sit comfortably and read a book.