Alex joins 15 other fabulous middle grade authors and illustrators in This is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us, edited by Katherine Locke and Nicole Melleby (Knopf, 2021) with their story, The Purr-cle of Life, in which an unnamed nonbinary main character remembers and old beloved cat and makes a new feline friend.
Excerpt: I hate dogs. People say you’re not supposed to hate stuff, but I do. I hate dogs because they scare me. Even the little ones have sharp teeth, and barking makes me want to curl into a ball. I’ve never heard of a cat biting a person. Nibbles, maybe, but nothing serious. And meows are much cuter than barks. Scout had a whole meow-cabulary. He had his “I’m hungry mrew, his “I’m stuck” mreh, his “I’m chasing a thing” mree-eee-eee, and his “pay attention to me” me-owww. Scout didn’t like dogs either. We were a good pair.
Every Body Shines: Sixteen Stories about Living Fabulously Fat, edited by Cassandra Newbould (Bloomsbury, 2021) brings another set of wonderful authors for young people together, this time reflecting a rainbow of fat bodies.
Excerpt: Plump, their mom would say. Heavy-set, their dad would say. You have such a beautiful face, their grandmother would say. But seeing as Sam was neither fruit nor furniture, they preferred to be called fat. And as for their face, it was fine, but ignoring their body was not. They were lucky enough to have been introduced to fat activism a few years ago, and they had learned to admire their large, nonbinary body in the mirror for taking them through the world, lumps and curves and all.
Bonus fact: Sam and TJ, the main characters of Alex’s story, Prom Queers, go on to star in Alex’s fourth novel, Alice Austen Lived Here, though chronologically in their lives, this story comes a bit later.
In, Body Talk, edited by Kelly Jensen, (Algonquin Young Readers, 2020) Alex shares the empowerment they felt the first time they said the word Fat Out Loud, as the title of their essay suggests.
Excerpt: The shame I shed that day. Not all of it, not nearly. But I had a new word to try on for size. Language is powerful. It can provide connection and validation. It can also cause hurt and shame. My shame of the word fat was a mirror of the shame of my own body that was so deep I couldn’t even name it. Changing my reaction to the word fat, and embracing it, has been a vital part of loving my fat body.
Alex’s essay Body Sovereignty: This Fat Trans Flesh is Mine opens the amazing anthology, The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat and Fierce, edited by Angie Manfredi (Amulet Books, 2019.)
Excerpt: Body sovereignty is doing something because you want to, not because you’re supposed to. A fat man eating ice cream in public is an act of protest against a world that shames and demonizes him. A tall trans woman who wears six-inch heels flaunts her pride in the face of gender norms. A Black nonbinary person who wears their kinky hair naturally looks white beauty standards in the eye and says, “I don’t need you.”
Alex joins authors, activists, and advocates in sharing their thoughts for turbulent times in How I Resist edited by Maureen Johnson (Wednesday Books, 2018).
Excerpt: When you talk about your activism, you’re likely to do more, and the people you talk with might be motivated to get more engaged as well. But it’s not just about getting people to act. The connection itself is key to resistance. The more connected we are, the more unbreakable we are. The more we communicate, the more we know what’s really happening and the more we can see where the threads of our tales come together. The more we discuss what is wrong, the more hope we have of finding solutions.
Don’t miss Alex’s mind-blowing “History of the Future”, written when Alex was 12, in Our Story Begins edited by Elissa Brent Weissman (Atheneum Books, 2017).
