13-03-2025
'As a gay author I know how books can change queer lives, we need to keep investing in it'
William Hussey speaks to Yahoo UK for Queer Voices about his new book The Boy I Love, lessons from history, and the future of LGBTQ+ stories in publishing.
He is the author of LGBTQ+ YA novels like The Outrage and Hideous Beauty as well as crime novels like the Detective Jericho series.
The Boy I Love is a YA historical romance novel about the love story between two soldiers who are on the frontlines during the First World War
Being an author I know that sharing queer stories is really important, especially for young people. My primary audience is young adults and we forget, I think, that the UK is not all like, say, London or Manchester or Brighton. Cosmopolitan areas where they might have resources or feel in that community a little bit more able to express themselves and be open, 98% of the country is not like that. There's increasing homophobia, transphobia.
So the way that you can help young queer people is to depict people like them in fiction, so that they feel represented and seen. And if you're seen as a real human being with value and integrity then it can really change queer lives. I really believe that representation in books and films and all kinds of art forms is needed. That's the privilege of being an author, telling these kind of stories.
I go into schools all around the country and I have that interaction with LGBTQ clubs in schools —which was obviously something I never had when I was at school— and kids come up to me and say they felt they found themselves reflected in the books, in the struggles of the characters and their experiences, and that then they've been able to come out to friends and family because of it.
Watch William Hussey's Queer Voices interview below
Knowing that has happened through them feeling safe through the representation that they've seen in my books has been a real privilege and a real honour. Writing is quite a lonely profession, essentially you're just stuck in your office, and so unless someone tells you that your books are having some kind of impact in that way you don't necessarily know.
The publishing industry is night and day compared to when I was young. I mean, my first children's book was 2010 and I think it was in that when a kind of real revolution happened. I did have a queer-coded character in my first children's book, I'm not sure that got pushback but I wouldn't have felt confident putting a very openly gay character in and then thinking, 'oh, it's going to be fine with being available commercially.'
I really think the turning point was with Becky Albertalli and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, or Love, Simon as it became for the film. It kind of opened the floodgates, and I don't think she's given enough credit at all because that book was a bit of a revolution.
And then from about 2014, 2015, you saw a real opening of the gates and publishers taking that need for representation really responsibly across the board, whether it's sexuality or gender or race.
We need more diverse representation, there's always more to do. I think some publishers, not all, are starting to shy away a bit from trans representation for example, because they're like, 'oh, we've got a limited amount of time and bandwidth to deal with pushback' and all the hate that they're going to get.
I mean, just look at what's happening in America with book banning. Publishing is still predominantly a commercial enterprise so if you're going to publish books and then you basically have got no chance of getting them into libraries and schools are not going to take them then that is going to impact commercial decisions.
So I think it's time for publishing to be really brave by planting their flag and saying: 'no, we're not going to be intimidated by this, and we're going to stand up for these stories.'
My new book The Boy I Love tells the love story between two soldiers, Stephen and Danny, who are on the frontlines before the Battle of the Somme. What I really wanted to do in the book was retell these stories of real queer soldiers who fought in the First World War authentically.
It involved a lot of research so going to archives, museums, reading letters from the time. Unlike in the Second World War —where there is a lot more content in the letters where gay soldiers were able to express themselves a bit more freely than in the First World War— the language that they used in letters was a lot more coded.
They were coded because the penalties if they were found out was court martial, social disgrace, imprisonment, two years hard labour. So you really had to read between the lines of those letters, to get the stories of love between servicemen at that particular time, and so there was that burden of history, I felt a real responsibility to try and recreate these stories and to present them for a modern audience.
I wanted to do something in tribute to those men who fought courageously and lived courageously. To come up with a story where there were young gay soldiers and to almost write a story in tribute to the love stories at the front line in the First World War.
The Outrage, meanwhile, is my dystopian LGBTQ+ book set 30 years from now in a Britain that's been taken over by a Far Right political party. I think my only mistake with that book was to set it 30 years from now because it feels like it's becoming increasingly relevant with increasing homophobia, transphobia, and with people with very powerful platforms online targeting some of the most victimised and marginalised people — even within the LGBTQ community.
It was really written as a warning to the future, it actually came about because I was at London Pride in 2019 and had my Stonewall Inn T-shirt on and there was a group of young gay men there who asked me, 'oh, what is Stonewall?' They didn't know it, or its importance in LGBTQ+ history and the gay liberation movement it created.
I always feel that if you don't know your history you're doomed to repeat it, so that's why I wrote The Outrage. That was a warning against complacency, and unfortunately in the couple of years since the book's been published I think it's probably just become more and more relevant.
It's important to know our history, like Section 28 — the law in England, Scotland and Wales that meant local authorities, schools and teachers couldn't discuss or promote homosexuality.
When I go into schools and I speak about Section 28 the jaws just drop, when you're speaking to 12, 13 year olds they can't believe it. They can't believe that teachers and librarians were putting their jobs and their futures at risk just by mentioning the existence of gay people.
It's always crazy to me, that censorship under Section 28 came around the height of the AIDS pandemic when, as we all know, information is the best way to keep yourself safe. So when we have sex education at schools under Section 28 it was all about straight sex. Yes, they spoke about condoms, but it was always in terms of pregnancy, not about sexually transmitted infections or anything like that.
I believe there's blood on the hands of that government. The only way they really interacted with the AIDS pandemic was with those tombstone commercials. Section 28 was one of the most pernicious, vile laws. It's responsible for the unnecessary death of thousands of people, and it just shows you the dire consequences of ignorance.
Unfortunately I grew up in the period of the early 90s, where Section 28 was still in force so there weren't TV shows depicting gay characters, it was just prior to Queer as Folk and we were either depicted in sitcoms as clowns to be laughed at, or in dramas as victims or sinister serial killers.
It was a little bit later on when I fell in love with the works of Oscar Wilde. But all of these people seemed very remote, they either lived in a different country or they had existed years ago, and especially in Wilde's case that was almost like a warning story. Don't be too 'out' or see what society does to you.
We didn't have rounded depictions of ourselves in culture. I had an English teacher called Mrs Breeds at school who defied Section 28, as I was just leaving class one day she handed me a copy of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and she said to me, 'I think this book will really speak to you.'
It's only later that I realised that she was putting her job on the line by giving me that book, so that was the first book, the first piece of art, where I felt that I could see myself and hopefully in my future reflected. But other than that it was a real desert of representation in the time when I grew up.
Representation is so fantastic now across all kinds of media. You can go from like Heartstopper on the more joyful end of the spectrum, and then you've got wonderful books like Simon James Green's Boy Like Me which is set during the era of Section 28, and everything in between.
We've had incredible trailblazers in the LGBTQ+ community, people like Russell T Davis, obviously. In my late teens his show Queer as Folk was key for me, I would sneak downstairs and watch it with the volume turned really low so that no one knew.
But there are many trailblazers now and I just feel that there are many challenges for young queer people. I think it's getting worse culturally, the bullying, the targeting, the political targeting of queer lives. But there still wonderful, brave trailblazers who are still out there fighting the good fight.
In terms of publishing LGBTQ+ representation is just going to keep progressing and we're going to see more stories. I think there are certain things that are underrepresented, say trans characters. bisexual characters, asexual characters, aromantic characters — stuff like that. So there's lots more still to do.
My fear is that with everything that's happening in America alerts to a kind of cultural conservatism in this country, a kind of stepping back.
My fear is that, and hopefully I'm wrong, people will start to see it as —I hate to say it— more hassle than it's worth when you can publish say a romantasy book or a middle-aged fantasy book and you know you're not going to get any of these issues. It's not going to take up the very limited, valuable time that publishers have and the investment.
Just putting books on shelves costs publishers a huge amount of money, every book is a gamble and with the margins narrowing they could say, 'well, we've got this brilliant gay book, but we've also got this really brilliant fantasy book. Which one are we going to invest in?'
Brilliant publishers like Anderson Press are always going to stick up for that kind of stuff, but it makes me worry about what choices other publishers will make.
I, in a weird way, feel like I was quite privileged to have grown up when I did, even though my childhood was under Section 28 it felt like in the post-mid '90s that everything was improving. We didn't have our rights but we were getting them, then we got them and everyone was cool, you know? Everyone was like, 'oh, you're gay. That's great.' No one was bothered and then it has swung back again.
In terms of tackling bigotry and hate online, I'm not always good at this but what I'm increasingly learning is you fight them with positivity by keeping telling the stories — otherwise you just ignore them. Because you can shout and scream back at them all you want on social media, it's not going to change their mind.
I think the only thing you can do is keep representing people, actors, films, books, stories, activists, whoever it is, can do that. Just keep going out so that people see you as a human being.
The Boy I Love by William Hussey is out now.
