Ten years is a really long time. I don’t even know what to say about that, except last week I got a tremendous acknowledgment from a whole bunch of my absolute favorite queer authors about what this site has meant to them, and though it took me a while to read it because I couldn’t stop crying, it was the best thing in the entire world, up there with when two of my best friends commissioned the banner you see above for the 5th anniversary.
It won’t surprise you to learn that this site is a lot of work. I think it’s important work, obviously. I could say I think it’s more important now than ever, and that’s probably true, but the truth is I’ve always thought it’s of the utmost importance and that’s why I do it.
Why I created it way back in 2016 (and conceived it even further back) was based on two ideas:
1) There are a bunch of great queer sites, each with a specialty of sorts, but none that encompasses all categories and genres in this sort of way.
2) There’s so little queer lit, and there are so many people discovering queerness at different stages of life, and so many people who grew up having so much less than we do now, that people are much more likely to read cross-category and cross-genre preferences when it comes to queer lit than is typical elsewhere.
The former is still true, as far as I know. The latter, heh. Let’s just say the site has grown a lot. When I started this site, the lists were so, so small. I always say that if I’d known how much queer lit would blow up in the years following 2016, I probably would’ve never embarked on a project like this. We’ve come a very long way from “Should I even bother with a Middle Grade page?”
If you’ve found some great books through the site, I’m so glad. If you’ve felt seen by the site, I’m so glad. If you’ve felt acknowledged, your work celebrated, I’m so glad. If you use this site as a resource, whether you’re a librarian or an educator or a bookseller, I’m so freaking glad. There are a million things I wanted this site to do that I simply never had the time for, but there are also a million things that it’s done in its ten years of existence and I wouldn’t take that back for anything.
When I wrote a post for the 5th anniversary, I included some fun facts, so, let’s do some more of those, mostly to shut me up.
This is post number 1,734. There are currently 51 posts scheduled between tomorrow and February 5, 2027.
Officially, as of writing this, the site has received 3,265,393 hits.
The largest social media following is on BlueSky, at 26.8K. Tumblr is next with 24.8K.
The most viewed page on the entire site is also probably the idea I was most excited about conceiving, which is Romance by Trope/Archetype. Second most, by the way, is Middle Grade.
The most viewed post on the entire site is… Most Anticipated Adult Fiction: January-June 2022. Fun fact: January-June always gets more views than July and December. Give those latter months some love!
The most popular Fave Five is… Queer WWII Fiction
The most popular guest post is still Recommendations for Polyamory in Fiction by Shira Glassman (though in fairness I mostly stopped doing guest posts these past bunch of years)
But now I want to hear from you. If you’ve used the site at all in the past 10 years, what have you used it for? What’s your favorite book you’ve discovered with it? And if there’s a rec post you’ve been hoping for and haven’t seen yet, what is it??
Ally North (she/her) is a queer writer who has been writing fiction her entire life. During the pandemic, she began writing sapphic romance out of pure chaotic boredom and discovered an untried knack for the genre. She lives in America, but occasionally she lives in England. When she isn’t writing, Ally can be found cooking with obscene amounts of garlic, traveling someplace new, rescuing animals, and feeding Jean-Claude, the wild possum who lives under her shed.
