WPS Author Interview Day 11: Gabriel Hargrave

 WPS Author Interview Day 11: Gabriel Hargrave 

Welcome to day 11 of the Wonderland Pride Spotlight author interviews! Today I am interviewing Gabriel Hargrave. To see all of the spotlight posts created by my lovely community, head over to the hashtag #wonderlandpridespotlight over on Instagram! 

Gabriel's Books

• The Orchid and the Lion
• The Lion and the Dahlia
• It Happened One Light
• Unapologetic Love (part of this anthology)
• Between Desire and Satisfaction
• The Things We Pretend
• The Observation Deck

The Interview

1. Are you LGBTQ+? If so, how?

"I’m a queer trans man. I mostly identify as a gay man, but in reality, I’m probably closer to bi or pan."

2. What books of yours have LGBTQ+ representation, and what rep do they have?

"All of them, actually. LOL! My main body of work—the Orchid and the Lion series—has a diverse array of characters: cis, trans, non-binary; allo and ace; gay, straight, lesbian, pan, and everything else under the rainbow. My goal is to include as much rep as possible and to show how even people who use the same labels can use those labels in different ways. I also have an erotic short story collection that has a bunch of diverse characters, and my first ever novella features a trans man protagonist and a trans woman love interest."

3. Why do you think LGBTQ+ rep in books is important?

"All of them, actually. LOL! My main body of work—the Orchid and the Lion series—has a diverse array of characters: cis, trans, non-binary; allo and ace; gay, straight, lesbian, pan, and everything else under the rainbow. My goal is to include as much rep as possible and to show how even people who use the same labels can use those labels in different ways. I also have an erotic short story collection that has a bunch of diverse characters, and my first ever novella features a trans man protagonist and a trans woman love interest."

4. What got you into writing?

"I’ve been writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil, basically. Books have always been a huge part of my life, and I knew from about the age of five that I wanted to write for a living. There’s something really special about creating characters and telling stories about them, and I’m lucky that I’ve been able to make this lifelong dream a reality."

5. Who is a queer figure you look up to?

"At any other point in my life, I would’ve given the name of one person, someone like James Baldwin or Marsha P. Johnson or Freddie Mercury, but given what’s happening today in the US and the UK and in other countries around the world, my answer is much broader. I look up to every queer person who’s living their life despite all the hatred and violence and legislation targeting them. I look up to every trans youth in the US who’s spending their childhood fighting to be themselves; I look up to every queer Palestinian who’s dying while the rest of the world argues if one state’s homophobia is enough to turn a blind eye to another state’s systematic genocide of innocent people; I look up to the people fighting for liberation in countries where being gay is still a crime and the people tirelessly working to combat misinformation and transphobia masquerading as “feminism.” Whether you’re out and outspoken or closeted for your own safety, every single queer person just trying to exist in a world increasingly hostile to them is a hero in their own right."