Alaina Leary is a Boston-based publishing professional. She's a social media assistant for We Need Diverse Books, and has centered her career around inclusive, intersectional representation in publishing. When she's not reading, she spends her time with her two cats and covering everything in glitter.
Reading Is How I Traveled As A Kid — Because Leaving My Hometown Just Wasn't An Option
On the first day of second grade, Mrs. P asked everyone to go around the room and tell the class what we’d done over summer break. “My family went to California,” someone said. Another kid talked about trips to Six Flags, Canobie Lake Park, and…
By Alaina Leary
YA Novels Are Still Leaving Queer Girls Behind & It's Not OK
If you search "queer women young adult books" on Google, the top result is a book list compiled by Autostraddle. When I was a queer teenager, lists like these barely existed and when they did, they usually weren't in highly visible magazines and…
By Alaina Leary
Why It's Not OK That Marginalized Characters Are Almost Never Single In Literature
When was the last time you read a book with an LGBTQIA+ protagonist whose identity wasn’t defined by their romantic relationships to other people? Or what about a book with a disabled protagonist who was single — and not absolutely miserable?
It’s…
By Alaina Leary
Publishing Has Failed Autistic & Disabled People — Here's How To Fix It
In December of 2017, autistic advocate and YouTuber Amythest Schaber started the #BoycottToSiri hashtag as a reaction to the widely criticized memoir To Siri With Love by Judith Newman, a book written by a neurotypical woman about her relationship…
By Alaina Leary
YA Lit Is Leading The Push For More Queer Disabled Representation
I love a good historical fantasy, so I picked up The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue on the day that it was published, because I have been dying to read something more than non-canonically romantic subtext between queer characters before the…
By Alaina Leary
What Women In Publishing Really Think About 'The Bold Type'
From The Devil Wears Prada to Gilmore Girls to Freeform’s new show The Bold Type, the media has a lot of influence over cultural understanding of journalism, and women’s magazines and media companies in particular. While serious films like Spotlight…
By Alaina Leary
How To Support The Diverse Books Movement
The movement for more diverse books is nothing new, and if you’re a reader who supports more diverse books and authors, you may be left wondering: What can I do? We often see the same books on bookstore and library shelves that we see reviews of in…
By Alaina Leary
Kids Like Me Are The Reason I'm Scared Of DeVos
In second grade, I spent almost every day in Mrs. S’s reading room. Tuesdays and Thursdays were our “official” days, but I’d find almost any reason I could to get out of class, walk down the twisting hallways of Ferryway Elementary, and be…
By Alaina Leary
My 2017 Resolution Is To Read More Diverse Books
I still remember the first time I was really introduced to diverse books in a systematic, purposeful way. I was in seventh grade, and my English teacher was Ms. Facey, a black woman who wore her long hair in braids and used her hands a lot. She was…
By Alaina Leary
How 'Six Of Crows' Taught Me To Survive
The last year has not been a comforting time for sexual violence and assault survivors. Between the rape culture intertwined into this election season to the Stanford Brock Turner case to the Bill Cosby case, it’s been exhausting. Everywhere we…
By Alaina Leary