A new podcast will bring listeners a free audiobook version of an award-winning young adult novel about a gay teen, as a way of reaching teens whose access to such books may be blocked by so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws.
“If I’d found out that Abraham Lincoln was in love with another man back when I was thirteen, or fifteen, it would have changed my whole life,” said author Lee Wind in a press release. “Growing up gay and closeted, the idea that important people in history were also guys who like-liked other guys might have helped me love myself a little bit more—it certainly would have given me hope.”
“While I don’t have a time machine to go back and give my books to myself when I most needed them,” Wind said, “I can pay it forward. Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill: The Podcast is a way to empower the young people who need this today.”
Releasing the book as a free podcast available to anyone, anywhere, the press release said, “is a way around the banning of books with LGBTQIA2+ content, and the recent legislation banning any mention of queer lives and loves from public schools” in Florida and elsewhere.
Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill (Bookshop; Amazon) tells the story of ninth-grader Wyatt Yarrow, who is struggling against homophobic bullies in school and helping his parents run their Lincoln-themed bed-and-breakfast in Lincolnville, Oregon. A school project leads Wyatt to realize that Lincoln had a romantic relationship with another man. He decides to spread the knowledge in an attempt to change people’s opinion about gay people—who, he is coming to realize, include himself.
Wyatt’s small town, however, isn’t ready to acknowledge Lincoln’s queerness, however, and Wyatt’s revelation leads to backlash not only against him, but also against his parents and their B-and-B. A lawyer for a civil rights organization comes to help—showing up with her son, who just happens to be Wyatt’s age … and gay … and cute. Wind blends the interpersonal story lines with the historical mystery to create an engaging tale with compelling characters. (See my full review here; this book isn’t in my database, which only covers up through middle grade.)
The book won the National Indie Excellence Award for Best Book and was one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Five Independently Published Middle Grade and Young Adult Books of 2018. Now young people (and their adults!) can listen to it free via the podcast, which will drop 36 episodes across five Thursdays in June. It is narrated by Audie Award- and Earphones Award-winning voiceover actor Michael Crouch. You can check out the short introduction now on Spotify, Audible, or Google Podcasts and subscribe so that you don’t miss an episode!
Bonus episodes of the podcast will include the author interviewed by legendary children’s and YA author and poet Lesléa Newman, the world-premiere audio recording of the Lincoln chapter from Wind’s other book, No Way, They Were Gay?, and a sneak peek at the introduction from his upcoming nonfiction title, The Gender Binary is a Big Lie (Zest Books/Lerner Publishing Group, April 2024; Bookshop.)
Wind, who has a master’s degree in education from Harvard, is the founder and publisher of I’m Here. I’m Queer. What The Hell Do I Read?, an award-winning website about books and more for LGBTQ youth, which he launched in 2007. Additionally, he is the director of marketing and programming at the Independent Book Publishers Association, and the official blogger for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. His previous book, No Way, They Were Gay? Hidden Lives and Secret Loves (Bookshop, Amazon), won the 2022 International Literacy Association Book Awards: Young Adult Nonfiction, was named to the 2021 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books, was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, and was an Outstanding Merit recipient of the Children’s Book Committee of the Bank Street College of Education “Best Books of the Year.”