We don't talk enough about how much pressure marginalized authors are under to write YA.

I hate that YA is treated as this bastion for diversity, because it breeds this superiority that just...is in no way justified. The YA community may not police marginalized voices in the same way as other genres but it does...do that. And trad publishing is trad publishing.

Marginalized authors who write outside of YA are often ostracized from the writing community. YA never interrogates itself and asks why we don't feel welcome there.

Instead I have to read ten threads a year from YA writers talking about how racist, sexist, and outdated adult fantasy is and how the only way to fix my favorite genre is to make it like your favorite genre. All while erasing the many BIPOC who write adult SFF.

And for the record the snide comments about how if ASOIAF was written by a woman it would be considered YA? What does that accomplish? All those critiques of a genre by people who haven't read it. You're perpetuating the very things you claim to critique.

It also hurts, quite frankly, when I do see YA writers shift to adult lately (I suppose that's a trend now) who I saw just a year or two ago talking about how much they hated the genre. And now they're trying to "fix" it.

Adult SFF authors don't even get a fraction of what their YA fantasy counterparts do. And the fraction is halved when you're marginalized. They don't get the same marketing, publisher support, advances...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE read adult SFF. I don't care what you read quite frankly because the genre as a whole needs to be more accepted on writing twitter. But also pleased preorder books by diverse authors! Tell your friends about them! Get them the attention they deserve.

Thought of a new ending for this thread:

marginalized writers (or really anyone in YA) who are interested in either reading or writing more adult SFF my dms are open and I am happy to help answer questions/point you towards books