First Queer Book/Book with LGBT+ Characters You Read

I grew up in rural Nova Scotia, Canada during the 80s/early 90s and was reading 'adult' books by Grade 5, so the first novel that I ever encountered that had characters that I identified with was Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, though I guess that was more of a 'queer aesthetic' than overtly LGBT+ characters. I had a neighbour- a woman in her forties- who lived down the road and had never met anyone who read that kind of book, so she loaned me Cry to Heaven, which was the first time I'd ever encountered queer sex before (at the ripe old age of ten or eleven). My mother was furious with her and raved about how depraved and disgusting the neighbour was, but I finished reading it in secret.

The first book I read with a gay author was probably The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, in part because only older novels with LGBT characters/authors were available in my small town library. I wound up reading all of his work, as well as getting hold of a fair few Beat Generation novels, poems and short stories. I suspect that's why I've grown up with a fairly bizarre queer identity, since it was shaped by the only things that I had access to (as well as a lot of reading between lines).

There were slim pickings at my library, too! My first book with a queer aesthetic was Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf. I remember being totally engrossed by it while also being disappointed that it wasn't as overt as I'd hoped it would be. Shortly after that I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood which had the first queer female character I really felt a personal connection with. Sappho's fragments I wolfed down as well though, of course, I discovered that her reputation was a lot more scandalous than her work.

I know which book I wish I had read first. A year or so ago I read Huntress by Malinda Lo, a YA fantasy novel with two queer main characters. I don't read much YA but that book really hit me. I totally identified with the way the relationship developed and how they were trying to figure out themselves at the same time. It's like I was having my feelings from 15 years ago reflected back at me. I can't express how much I wish I could go back in time and give that book to 12 year old me.

>2 iamFOXFIRE:

I can't express how much I wish I could go back in time and give that book to 12 year old me.

I know what you mean. I'm glad that I had some type of access to LGBT+ literature when I was young, since I recognise that so many kids/teenagers in our community don't, but now that I'm older there are so many books that I wish had been published back then. The quality and diversity of stories has improved pretty substantially, even though there's still a long way to go.

I don't remember which was actually the first such book I read, because when I was younger I was very religious in a socially-conservative way and, while I did read a lot of books that weren't religiously approved, I would usually ignore or avoid LGBTQ characters that appeared in my reading material. At that age I read a lot of SF/fantasy from the 70s-80s, and many of them have LGB minor characters or very subtle themes. Not many trans* ones that I can think of. I avoided books with unsubtle LGBTQ content until later.

The first book with a lot of gay content that I both remember and was ready for, somewhere in my teens, was Melusine by Sarah Monette. I may have got it from the Science Fiction Book Club, or if I didn't, I saw it in the catalog and got it somewhere else. After that I started to look on purpose for books with gay characters. (I might have read Kushiel's Dart before then, but I am not sure. My memory is very bad when it comes to my own past. And it didn't make as strong an impression.)

I don't know which was the first book by a LGBTQ author I read, because sometimes one does not know an author's identity. Probably it was someone like Arnold Lobel when I was a small child.

I've been reluctant to answer this question. (Yes, for two years now.) I had wished to remember a book with at least a queer aesthetic that was better than what comes to mind. And I finally have.

I was thinking, sadly, that my first experience in printed fiction was with a gay character in Orson Scott Card's The Memory of Earth. The character is persuaded to leave his planet to travel on a pilgrimage to Earth, but he first must marry a woman and agree to produce children, as if there's never any problems with that. What a martyr. Then his sexuality is dismissed through the rest of the book and the sequels, because it's OSC writing him.

I think I was newly fourteen when I read that novel.

But when I was twelve years old, an English tutor learned I liked Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He loaned me a copy of Twelfth Night, aka What You Will. I was in theater at the time, and I was delighted by the idea that I might one day play Viola/Cesario, wearing both masculine and feminine costumes for the same character, with both the Duke and Lady Olivia to play off of in a wooing game.

(The one time I've auditioned for the part, I was turned down by the playhouse because of my age, still a minor.)

I don't think I read a book with multiple openly queer characters until my late 20s, when I lived somewhere with an annual Pride festival. Before that, if my local public libraries offered any, it was something of a secret I wasn't in on.

Interesting question, I wish I knew exactly... Technically, I suppose it must've been in one of my favourite Ladybird books, about Alexander the Great, but at three and thereabouts I certainly didn't know he'd qualify. Handel was another... (Ladybird "Story of Music" series)

I honestly don't know. Probably something scifi, which was the hidden way that queer characters turned up in my reading for a long time, since other queer books tended to be categorised as such and weren't where I could access them. But when I was in my early 20s Dare Truth or Promise won our National Childrens Book Awards, and that was amazing, even with the controversy over the win.

David Levithan has some good LGBTQ+ books, I particularly liked Every Day.

That's a tough one. I always knew I wasn't cis/het/endosex, but I didn't seem to fit any "established" category at that time. The Alix comics by Jacques Martin are somewhat homoerotic, but I'm not a gay man - so that didn't really help much either

There may have been others before, but the first openly gay book I can remember picking up was The Adventures of Miles Diamond by Derek Adams, an erotic detective story put out by Harlequin's Badboy Books imprint. I became a fan of that imprint and had many of their books (a shame I didn't hold on to them, some of them are worth $$$ now.

I've known I was gay since I was a kid, but growing up in the '70's and '80's, gay-themed books weren't so easy to find. Those Badboy books opened my eyes a bit.