At Wi16, a Romance Panel with Love for YA By Alex Green | Feb 23, 2021
The American Booksellers Association’s 16th Winter Institute was a streamlined affair this year, with booksellers logging in digitally to the three-day gathering. But the conference’s single track of sessions opened with momentum a keynote by former President Barack Obama and that spirit carried throughout in events rich with energy, from presenters and attendees alike.
“I knew that we could easily talk for three hours and the fact that we only have 40 minutes, it’s just not fair,” Scholastic v-p and editorial director David Levithan joked while moderating the LGBTQ+ romance panel. Like many of the sessions, the free-roving conversation took its own shape, with authors emphasizing young adult romance as a particularly well-suited genre for stories with expansive LGBTQ+ representation.