Tag Archives: Just Ash

Happy (Upcoming) Intersex Awareness Day 2025!

Intersex Awareness Day is October 26th, and we’re celebrating as we do with books that have intersex rep! All of these titles either have intersex MCs, or have intersex secondary characters but are also by intersex authors. 

Middle Grade Fiction

Cattywampus by Ash Van Otterloo

In the town of Howler’s Hollow, conjuring magic is strictly off-limits. Only nothing makes Delpha McGill’s skin crawl more than rules. So when she finds her family’s secret book of hexes, she’s itching to use it to banish her mama’s money troubles. She just has to keep it quieter than a church mouse — not exactly Delpha’s specialty.

Trouble is, Katybird Hearn is hankering to get her hands on the spell book, too. The daughter of a rival witching family, Katy has reasons of her own for wanting to learn forbidden magic, and she’s not going to let an age-old feud or Delpha’s contrary ways stop her. But their quarrel accidentally unleashes a hex so heinous it resurrects a graveyard full of angry Hearn and McGill ancestors bent on total destruction. If Delpha and Katy want to reverse the spell in time to save everyone in the Hollow from rampaging zombies, they’ll need to mend fences and work together.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N

Continue reading Happy (Upcoming) Intersex Awareness Day 2025!

Intersex Awareness Day Book Spotlight: Just Ash by Sol Santana

Ashley “Ash” Bishop has always known who he is: a guy who loves soccer, has a crush on his friend Michelle, and is fascinated by the gruesome history of his hometown―Salem, Massachusetts. He’s also always known that he’s intersex, born with both male and female genitalia. But it’s never felt like a big deal until his junior year of high school, when Ash gets his first period in front of the entire boys’ soccer team. Now his friends and teachers see him differently, and his own mother thinks he should “try being a girl.”

As tensions mount with his parents and Ash feels more and more like an outcast, he can’t help feeling a deeper kinship with his ancestor Bridget Bishop, who was executed for witchcraft. She didn’t conform to her community’s expectations either; she was different, and her neighbors felt threatened by her. And she paid the ultimate price. Ash is haunted by her last recorded words: You will keep silent.

Ash realizes that he needs to find a way to stand up for who he really is, or the cost of his silence might destroy his life, too.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound

Intersex author Sol Santana became one of only a handful of women to make the rank of Eagle Scout before being shunned by President Trump in 2017. She later turned in her badge. Her writing has received commendations from President Obama and NYS Assemblyman William Colton. She is studying to be a preschool teacher.