'As a gay author I know how books can change queer lives, we need to keep investing in it'
William Hussey speaks to Yahoo UK for Queer Voices about his new book The Boy I Love, lessons from history, and the future of LGBTQ+ stories in publishing.
He is the author of LGBTQ+ YA novels like The Outrage and Hideous Beauty as well as crime novels like the Detective Jericho series.
The Boy I Love is a YA historical romance novel about the love story between two soldiers who are on the frontlines during the First World War
Being an author I know that sharing queer stories is really important, especially for young people. My primary audience is young adults and we forget, I think, that the UK is not all like, say, London or Manchester or Brighton. Cosmopolitan areas where they might have resources or feel in that community a little bit more able to express themselves and be open, 98% of the country is not like that. There's increasing homophobia, transphobia.
So the way that you can help young queer people is to depict people like them in fiction, so that they feel represented and seen. And if you're seen as a real human being with value and integrity then it can really change queer lives. I really believe that representation in books and films and all kinds of art forms is needed. That's the privilege of being an author, telling these kind of stories.
I go into schools all around the country and I have that interaction with LGBTQ clubs in schools —which was obviously something I never had when I was at school— and kids come up to me and say they felt they found themselves reflected in the books, in the struggles of the characters and their experiences, and that then they've been able to come out to friends and family because of it.
Watch William Hussey's Queer Voices interview below
Knowing that has happened through them feeling safe through the representation that they've seen in my books has been a real privilege and a real honour. Writing is quite a lonely profession, essentially you're just stuck in your office, and so unless someone tells you that your books are having some kind of impact in that way you don't necessarily know.
The publishing industry is night and day compared to when I was young. I mean, my first children's book was 2010 and I think it was in that when a kind of real revolution happened. I did have a queer-coded character in my first children's book, I'm not sure that got pushback but I wouldn't have felt confident putting a very openly gay character in and then thinking, 'oh, it's going to be fine with being available commercially.'
I really think the turning point was with Becky Albertalli and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, or Love, Simon as it became for the film. It kind of opened the floodgates, and I don't think she's given enough credit at all because that book was a bit of a revolution.
And then from about 2014, 2015, you saw a real opening of the gates and publishers taking that need for representation really responsibly across the board, whether it's sexuality or gender or race.
We need more diverse representation, there's always more to do. I think some publishers, not all, are starting to shy away a bit from trans representation for example, because they're like, 'oh, we've got a limited amount of time and bandwidth to deal with pushback' and all the hate that they're going to get.
I mean, just look at what's happening in America with book banning. Publishing is still predominantly a commercial enterprise so if you're going to publish books and then you basically have got no chance of getting them into libraries and schools are not going to take them then that is going to impact commercial decisions.
So I think it's time for publishing to be really brave by planting their flag and saying: 'no, we're not going to be intimidated by this, and we're going to stand up for these stories.'
My new book The Boy I Love tells the love story between two soldiers, Stephen and Danny, who are on the frontlines before the Battle of the Somme. What I really wanted to do in the book was retell these stories of real queer soldiers who fought in the First World War authentically.
It involved a lot of research so going to archives, museums, reading letters from the time. Unlike in the Second World War —where there is a lot more content in the letters where gay soldiers were able to express themselves a bit more freely than in the First World War— the language that they used in letters was a lot more coded.
They were coded because the penalties if they were found out was court martial, social disgrace, imprisonment, two years hard labour. So you really had to read between the lines of those letters, to get the stories of love between servicemen at that particular time, and so there was that burden of history, I felt a real responsibility to try and recreate these stories and to present them for a modern audience.
I wanted to do something in tribute to those men who fought courageously and lived courageously. To come up with a story where there were young gay soldiers and to almost write a story in tribute to the love stories at the front line in the First World War.
The Outrage, meanwhile, is my dystopian LGBTQ+ book set 30 years from now in a Britain that's been taken over by a Far Right political party. I think my only mistake with that book was to set it 30 years from now because it feels like it's becoming increasingly relevant with increasing homophobia, transphobia, and with people with very powerful platforms online targeting some of the most victimised and marginalised people — even within the LGBTQ community.
It was really written as a warning to the future, it actually came about because I was at London Pride in 2019 and had my Stonewall Inn T-shirt on and there was a group of young gay men there who asked me, 'oh, what is Stonewall?' They didn't know it, or its importance in LGBTQ+ history and the gay liberation movement it created.
I always feel that if you don't know your history you're doomed to repeat it, so that's why I wrote The Outrage. That was a warning against complacency, and unfortunately in the couple of years since the book's been published I think it's probably just become more and more relevant.
It's important to know our history, like Section 28 — the law in England, Scotland and Wales that meant local authorities, schools and teachers couldn't discuss or promote homosexuality.
When I go into schools and I speak about Section 28 the jaws just drop, when you're speaking to 12, 13 year olds they can't believe it. They can't believe that teachers and librarians were putting their jobs and their futures at risk just by mentioning the existence of gay people.
It's always crazy to me, that censorship under Section 28 came around the height of the AIDS pandemic when, as we all know, information is the best way to keep yourself safe. So when we have sex education at schools under Section 28 it was all about straight sex. Yes, they spoke about condoms, but it was always in terms of pregnancy, not about sexually transmitted infections or anything like that.
I believe there's blood on the hands of that government. The only way they really interacted with the AIDS pandemic was with those tombstone commercials. Section 28 was one of the most pernicious, vile laws. It's responsible for the unnecessary death of thousands of people, and it just shows you the dire consequences of ignorance.
Unfortunately I grew up in the period of the early 90s, where Section 28 was still in force so there weren't TV shows depicting gay characters, it was just prior to Queer as Folk and we were either depicted in sitcoms as clowns to be laughed at, or in dramas as victims or sinister serial killers.
It was a little bit later on when I fell in love with the works of Oscar Wilde. But all of these people seemed very remote, they either lived in a different country or they had existed years ago, and especially in Wilde's case that was almost like a warning story. Don't be too 'out' or see what society does to you.
We didn't have rounded depictions of ourselves in culture. I had an English teacher called Mrs Breeds at school who defied Section 28, as I was just leaving class one day she handed me a copy of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and she said to me, 'I think this book will really speak to you.'
It's only later that I realised that she was putting her job on the line by giving me that book, so that was the first book, the first piece of art, where I felt that I could see myself and hopefully in my future reflected. But other than that it was a real desert of representation in the time when I grew up.
Representation is so fantastic now across all kinds of media. You can go from like Heartstopper on the more joyful end of the spectrum, and then you've got wonderful books like Simon James Green's Boy Like Me which is set during the era of Section 28, and everything in between.
We've had incredible trailblazers in the LGBTQ+ community, people like Russell T Davis, obviously. In my late teens his show Queer as Folk was key for me, I would sneak downstairs and watch it with the volume turned really low so that no one knew.
But there are many trailblazers now and I just feel that there are many challenges for young queer people. I think it's getting worse culturally, the bullying, the targeting, the political targeting of queer lives. But there still wonderful, brave trailblazers who are still out there fighting the good fight.
In terms of publishing LGBTQ+ representation is just going to keep progressing and we're going to see more stories. I think there are certain things that are underrepresented, say trans characters. bisexual characters, asexual characters, aromantic characters — stuff like that. So there's lots more still to do.
My fear is that with everything that's happening in America alerts to a kind of cultural conservatism in this country, a kind of stepping back.
My fear is that, and hopefully I'm wrong, people will start to see it as —I hate to say it— more hassle than it's worth when you can publish say a romantasy book or a middle-aged fantasy book and you know you're not going to get any of these issues. It's not going to take up the very limited, valuable time that publishers have and the investment.
Just putting books on shelves costs publishers a huge amount of money, every book is a gamble and with the margins narrowing they could say, 'well, we've got this brilliant gay book, but we've also got this really brilliant fantasy book. Which one are we going to invest in?'
Brilliant publishers like Anderson Press are always going to stick up for that kind of stuff, but it makes me worry about what choices other publishers will make.
I, in a weird way, feel like I was quite privileged to have grown up when I did, even though my childhood was under Section 28 it felt like in the post-mid '90s that everything was improving. We didn't have our rights but we were getting them, then we got them and everyone was cool, you know? Everyone was like, 'oh, you're gay. That's great.' No one was bothered and then it has swung back again.
In terms of tackling bigotry and hate online, I'm not always good at this but what I'm increasingly learning is you fight them with positivity by keeping telling the stories — otherwise you just ignore them. Because you can shout and scream back at them all you want on social media, it's not going to change their mind.
I think the only thing you can do is keep representing people, actors, films, books, stories, activists, whoever it is, can do that. Just keep going out so that people see you as a human being.
The Boy I Love by William Hussey is out now.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
Five quirky stories you missed this week as woman receives reply to message after 30 years
A woman who received a reply more than 30 years after she threw a message in a bottle into the sea is one of our five bizarre local news stories you may have missed this week. The Daily Record reported how Alaina Beresford, from Portknockie in Scotland, was shocked to receive a postcard from someone who had found the bottle washed up on a beach in Norway. Elsewhere, a seagull in Cornwall was caught on camera stealing a maintenance worker's mug, and a lollipop man in Yorkshire has been ordered not to give high fives to children he helps cross the road. You can read the full version of each of our selected articles through the links under each story – or read more top headlines from around the UK's regions on the Yahoo UK local news page. A woman who sent a message in a bottle as a girl has received a reply from 2,000 miles away - over 30 years after chucking it into the sea. Alaina Beresford was just 12 years old when she wrote a message and popped it into an empty bottle of iconic North East drink Moray Cup. And now, 31 years later, Alaina received the surprise of her life when that message got a response. Read the full story from the Daily Record A popular Stokesley pub has been named among finalist for the Best Pub for Dogs Award. The owner of The Mill, Alex Cook, says it was his own personal experience that led the way in creating a truly dog-friendly pub environment. The 43-year-old and his team are in the running for another award at The Great British Pub Awards, which takes place in September. In recent years, the pub has committed to catering for dog owners making it an experience for pups stopping by at the end of their walks. Read the full story from Teesside Live A beloved lollipop man has been told he can no longer give 'high fives' to children as they cross the road. Neil Cotton, 57, who assists primary and secondary pupils in Howden, near Hull, East Yorkshire, claims he's been instructed to stop the friendly gesture as it "upsets some drivers having to wait another ten seconds". Read the full story from Yorkshire Live A Herefordshire shop dealing in medals and military antiques is displaying another fascinating piece of history. War & Son Medal and Military Antiques based in Leominster have a piece of Adolf Hitler's marble map table from the Chancellery in Berlin at the end of the Second World War, thanks to the family of a British war veteran. Read the full story from the Hereford Times A maintenance man who had been bird-proofing a Cornish harbour town found himself the victim of a very unusual 'mugging', when a seagull got its own back - by flying off with his coffee mug. The caffeine-craving winged menace was pictured in full flight, with his victim's mug still hanging out of its beak. Read the full story from Cornwall Live
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
'We need to protect our trans siblings and be a community more than ever'
Lucy Spraggan rose to fame as a contestant on The X Factor in 2012, she has since become a successful musician in her own right. She joins Yahoo's Queer Voices to discuss her experience as a queer singer in the music industry, why Pride should be a protest again, and her affinity with the transgender community. Her new album Other Sides of the Moon is out now. I think it's important for us to be a community now more than ever. We all practise authenticity and love and being ourselves, and I genuinely think being there for our trans brothers and sisters now — like they have always been there for us — it's about allyship and it's about protecting each other. And I don't think that fight is finished yet. I think it's very important to still be fighting that fight. I do believe Pride should always be a protest that I feel like there's so much — as a community, we have so much to do for trans rights across the board. Pride should always be in protest. I have had real issues locally recently trying to drive the message through to people that trans people are all individuals. They're all different, we're all different, we're all authentic, so maybe we should just let people be themselves. But it's really hard, it's hard to push a message through to somebody who's ignorant and I just feel all I can do is support my trans friends and trans people I've never met as much as I can. Sometimes that feels like it's about literally, physically standing in front of them at protests. When I was on X Factor, I'd already been out for years. I came out and I was really young, so I remember one of the producers or press teams saying: 'Are you gonna like, come out?' And I was like, 'everybody already knows I'm gay'. And one week on The X Factor, we did the covers, I did a Gold Digger cover and everybody had backing dancers and I said 'Can mine be female backing dancers?' And they were all twerking up against me and it was absolutely amazing, and I remember feeling quite confident in being my queer self then. Things are so much more different about being queer now than when I was on X Factor. There's so many more people to see, there's so many more platforms to see queer people on. I love that about social media, it's one of the few things I love about social media — that you can see so many of your people. All of my music is inspired by my real life experiences. My new album is called Other Sides of the Moon, which is a song about my wife and how we fell in love with each other. So I guess there's intrinsic queerness throughout my entire album, but it's all about things I've felt or observed. I can't wait for it to come out, there's a collection of older songs on there that have been reborn in some ways and it's kind of a message to people: Think about the past or something they can change. And I looked at a lot of songs from the past and actually thought I'd like to give them new life. My favourite thing about being a musician is the culture and the community that there is at my shows. There's just so much diversity and my favourite thing is that music has brought all those people together and just being a part of it, I don't feel like a leader of it or anything like that, I just feel immersed in this community, and I love it. Whenever I think of Pride I think of being a 15-year-old living just outside of Manchester and going to Manchester Pride and just looking around and seeing so many people that just felt like family. And I remember that so vividly, walking around with my mouth open the whole weekend just thinking this is life. And I still feel that at Pride events now. My advice to young queer people is do your thing. Live your best life and protect each other and the whole phrase of 'blood is thicker than water' is actually the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, and that means that the the bond between nuns is actually thicker than the bond of those in in family situations. So if you need to create a new family, if you need to look for other people, go for it because that bond is thicker than it. I always go back to the storyline that I loved most on television, which was Coronation Street with Hayley Cropper, the trans character. It was so long ago, and it was so left field for that that time, and I went into school and they were asking what we wanted to be when we were older and loads of people were saying, 'firefighter', 'I wanna be a policeman' or actor and I said I wanna be a transsexual. I just thought it was such an amazing story, they used transsexual then on television because it was so dated, I think it was 2008. But I spent from age well late toddler to about 10 being called Max, I was a boy until puberty and so I didn't realise that [transitioning] was really possible until I saw it on television and I was like, 'Oh my God'. And now you get to see transgender people so much more, and I wonder if I'd have had access to the world in the same way that we do now if my choices would be different growing up. There's so many shows I wish I had. I remember watching Queer as Folk growing up, my mum was obsessed with Queer as Folk, and there's so much more now on offer. Before being gay was kind of like it was about how being gay meant you had to be part of this scene, and now there's so many things that represent being gay or being queer. You can just be a normal person and be that, and I like any shows that has that in it. In terms of my queer role models, growing up my mum's best friend Kathy is a trans woman and I remember just always feeling so empowered by her. Not just Kathy, but actually my mum was such a pioneer, she always surrounded us with artists and creatives and queer people — she's a real pioneer. I feel like there's room to improve when it comes to the platforms for queer people, I think there's always more to be done. I think within our community the amount of creativity and just fabulousness, it's always pouring out of the community, and I always feel like there could be more places for that art to be distributed. Not even necessarily in terms of more celebrating, but more more areas of industries that hone in on queer people and whatever that means for that. There's more avenues and more funding for people, especially young queer people, to express themselves. I think the future of queer storytelling is gonna be how it always has been. From Oscar Wilde right up until now, everyone's always gonna tell their story and it's going to be remembered because there's been so much adversity in this community for thousands of years.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
28 Years Later is terrifying to watch, and was just as scary to make
28 Years Later continues the tradition set out in 28 Days Later, of creating a terrifying British horror film that will have audiences quaking in their seats, and the cast tell Yahoo UK they felt much the same. The movie returns to the dystopian world created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, humanity are on the edge with the survivors in the UK living in fear of the Rage virus that has infected most of the population. The country has been abandoned by the rest of the world, quarantined so that the infection can't get out and spread further following a scare in 28 Weeks Later. A few survivors live on Lindisfarne, which is also known as Holy Island, and they only travel to the mainland if they have to or for a right of passage. The film opens with 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) being taken by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to nab his first kill, only for things to quickly go south. What this means is there are a number of encounters with infected over the course of the film, which were terrifying even for the cast. "It's intense, it's terrifying but also it's kind of fun and exciting. It's always good to play in this in this world," Taylor-Johnson admits to Yahoo UK, as he and Williams add they were frightened whilst filming a sequence on the Lindisfarne causeway that sees them running away from a 7 foot tall stunt performer portraying a new type of infected called an Alpha. Jodie Comer, who plays Spike's mum Isla, felt similarly when she had to face infected on set as she says: "There's some intense moments. But like you said, they're elaborate [scenes]. I think there's a lot of structure and choreography that goes into some of these moments, which sometimes kind of breaks up the reality. "But it's funny because I feel like for the first period of filming I spent a lot of time walking, talking in these beautiful locations, and then I was like met with an Infected and I was like, 'ohh yeah, sorry, this is also what happens in this film!' "I remember there was a sequence in the Happy Eater, which is like a disused petrol station, and me and Alfie run through these fields and were up to our knees in nettles being chased by stunt performers who are the infected. And they don't take the pace off, you know what I mean? "They're incredible and also you've been in hair and makeup for 3-5 hours in the morning, so there's not a lot that you're having to imagine. And then you're playing that you're hyperventilating and sprinting for your life. And then it's like, 'right, OK, go again'." The film is led not by its starry cast but by Williams, who has a lot of responsibility on his shoulders to keep the story afloat. It was a lot for the actor to deal with: "There was a lot of pressure, obviously, because 28 Days is just amazing. So I felt a lot of pressure on my shoulders, but working with such lovely people, and talented actors, it kind of soothed that, and it felt so much easier and fun." Comer was particularly impressed with her young co-star and said she even learned a valuable lesson from him and his approach to the craft: "I met Alfie 2 weeks before we started filming in Newcastle. We had like a two weeks rehearsal period where us, as the family, could get together and we went through the script with Danny and Alex and got familiar with each other and tried to create this kind of history, but it was so clear from the moment I met him [that he could do it]. "We sat around the table and he knew all his lines, he was so vocal about his interpretation, what he felt about the scene, asking really smart questions. Like there was just a real fearlessness about him, which I was inspired by, you know what I mean? I still have my moments where I'm like, 'oh, is this a stupid idea?' And I was like, 'no, you're part of the team, take up space and share yourself in that way'. So that was really lovely to witness." Comer also found solace in her co-star Ralph Fiennes, who plays reclusive survivor Dr Kelson whom Spike and Isla meet on their journey. It is with the actor that the film presents its first glimpse of the Bone Temple that the forthcoming third film in the franchise is named after. "It was kind of serendipitous," Comer says. "Because we got to the Bone Temple at the end of the shoot, so we'd played all the journey out, really. Spike always speaking about this doctor, and then we arrived there on this beautiful location in North Yorkshire and this structure, this set, had been built six months prior, it was right next to a river. We were on night shoots and it was like a full moon, there was wind chimes on the set made of bones and so there was like this constant flow of music going through it. "And I think Ralph's energy, and the energy of Dr Kelson, was so perfect, like me and Alfie kind of just feels like we ran into his arms and he guided us and took charge because that was his space. You really felt like you were in his domain and there was just something so tender about those scenes, and it felt like we were both very ready to be led by Kelson in that moment, so it was lovely." But working with Boyle was a particular highlight for the cast because of the way it felt like a moment to be there when he returned to one of his most iconic works. "I've been a massive fan of Danny for years," Comer says. "And it's so beautiful when you meet someone and realise that they're just as equally as a lovely human being. "He really sets a very high standard, in a sense of the way he treats people, the way he conducts himself, how playful he is, how energetic he is. He's so personable, so it was an amazing experience, considering when you watch the film it takes you on a roller coaster it was a very lighthearted intimate set." It was a sentiment shared by Taylor-Johnson, who adds: "He's amazing, just lovely, the warmness and so much energy that it meant every day felt wonderful to go to work and be in his presence. He is super creative, we're so fortunate that it's the whole team for 28 days who came back. Alex Garland was writing the script, Anthony Dod Mantle was the cinematographer. "They shot it on camcorder back then, now they're shooting on iPhones so they were being inventive in a whole other way. So this wasn't like a usual film set, it was just everyday there were new, exciting obstacles and things." The actor adds: "It's so cool, when you watch this movie it's so immersive and you are almost a fly on the wall at times within these scenes. It was great to be in that environment." 28 Years Later premieres in UK cinemas on Thursday, 19 June.
