On the identical day information broke concerning the loss of YA author Marcus Sedgwick, the YA neighborhood misplaced one more legend within the subject. Ellen Wittlinger, who wrote groundbreaking, hard-hitting sensible YA that includes queer characters in an period the place such tales have been exceedingly uncommon, died November 17, 2022.

Wittlinger’s profession began as a playwright within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s, after she earned her MFA on the College of Iowa Writers Workshop. Although she continued to put in writing performs and be energetic within the playwriting world, she discovered a real residence along with her writing abilities and writing voice in YA.

Hard Love, revealed in 1999 and her third novel, was a finalist for YALSA’s first ever Printz Award. It was additionally a Lambda Literary Award winner, and it earned starred critiques and important acclaim from a number of main shops. The story follows a boy and a lady who join over zines and, via the course of their friendship, navigate parental divorce, sexuality, and what it means to search out oneself.

“Perhaps an important factor that successful the Printz Honor Award did was make me really feel respectable in my very own eyes. Regardless that it was my third YA novel, successful a serious prize gave me a sense of acceptance within the subject that I hadn’t had earlier than. Abruptly I felt assured about saying, “Sure, that is what I do–I write novels for youngsters,”” mentioned Wittlinger in an interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith in 2005.

Central to Wittlinger’s books have been teen characters navigating emotionally-complex conditions, and he or she didn’t draw back from depicting the darkish components of the adolescent expertise. Her tales featured characters who have been aware of sophistication, in addition to social realities. Wittlinger revealed all through the early 2000s, throughout a time when queer YA–significantly brazenly queer YA–was uncommon.

Wittlinger is possibly finest identified for her e-book Parrotfish, one of many first books in YA that includes a trans major character. Revealed in 2007, the e-book follows Grady as he comes out as transgender and begins to transition, regardless of heavy opposition from family members. The e-book earned a Lambda Literary Award nomination. Parrotfish was a uncommon story giving energy to trans teenagers in a time when such tales weren’t being revealed, and ten years after publication, Wittlinger and her editor updated the book to make use of extra correct language across the trans expertise. Although a product of its 2007 publication, many cite it because the first time they saw themselves reflected in books written for them.

Tributes to the writer got here in over social media upon studying the information.

Different books by Wittlinger embody What’s In a Name, Zig Zag, Someone Else’s Shoes, Love & Lies: Marisol’s Story, Local Girl Swept Away, and extra.