Alaina Leary

When I was in seventh grade, I logged onto my MySpace blog and wrote a short blog post about being gay and afraid to come out to my family and frie

It’s helpful if you talk to your disabled loved ones to see what works for them. My family and friends have always been great at figuring out accessibility.

If you’re looking for a Pride Month reading list, or just want to get more LGBTQ+ books on your radar this year, here are a few worth checking out.

When Macey and I planned our engagement photos, I knew I wanted my sparkly, bright lavender cane to be in them.

In the aftermath of my rape, I became an activist for ending rape culture. And I quickly found that even in feminist circles, disability was often left out of the conversation completely.

I didn't use the word "asexual" until I was a senior in college. I didn't so much use the word as slur it, in between a long drunken ramble, to my girlfriend and our best friend in our apartment's small kitchen.

The education system isn’t designed for students like me. From as early as preschool up through my master’s degree, I struggled in a traditional classroom setting for a few reasons, and needed to adapt my own methods of surviving education.

I’ve walked the line between visibly and invisibly disabled my entire life.

All I wanted, most days, was a cute apartment with big windows, sheer curtains billowing in the breeze, where I could sit comfortably and read a book.

Diverse genre fiction shares a lot in common with diverse literature, in that a lot of the challenges are the same. We still have to ask a lot of questions about who gets to tell what stories, what kinds of books and authors are published, what it means to get it right, and who is on staff at the publishing houses that produce genre fiction.