Viking Says Yes to Gay YA

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a post on the representation of Minority Characters in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. It was primarily in response to authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith's attempts to find an agent for their post-apocalyptic young adult novel and how they had been asked to either make a gay character straight or drop the character from the novel entirely as a condition for the agent to represent the novel. Well, according to this post on Genreville, the authors have successfully sold their novel to Viking Press--without having to edit the character's sexual orientation. The book, entitled Stranger, is scheduled for winter 2014.