A Roundtable of Creatives Organized by Lilly Lu and Michelle Jing Chan

Q: We’re so excited to gather this roundtable of very cool, very diverse creatives. Can we each go around and say a little bit about ourselves?

Michelle Jing Chan: Thank you so much, Amanda and Bookish Brews, for having us! I’m a queer (bi and ace) Chinese American author-illustrator in kidlit. My background is in engineering and economics, but my heart has always been in storytelling. I’ve been making picture books for 4 years now—most recently I illustrated My Little Golden Book About Pride (written by Kyle Lukoff). I also make comics; my debut Young Adult graphic novel, Somewhere in the Gray, is out from Macmillan in 2027. It’s about gray-asexuality and inspired by some of my own experiences. I’m super excited about it and to be talking about ace stories with all of you! Many of us in this roundtable have been discussing this topic with each other in real life chats and texts for years. It’s so cool to get to share our thoughts on this officially!

Lilly Lu: So excited that this is happening and that we have such an amazing panel of creators I so deeply admire! By day, I’m a literary scholar and educator, and by night, I’m an author writing across several age groups. In both my research and creative work, I’m trying to carve out more space for thinking about the asexuality spectrum, diasporic studies, and the novel form. My main research specialty is the anglophone long eighteenth century up through the Regency Period (think Jonathan Swift to Jane Austen), and how this period of literature can teach us about the histories of imperialism, gender and sexuality, and literature–and the connections between those things.

Maia Kobabe: Hello all, I’m a nonbinary queer cartoonist. I use the pronouns e, em, eir. My graphic memoir, Gender Queer, touches on themes of asexuality and aromantism, both of which I have continued to think about since that book was published six years ago. If/when I write a sequel memoir, aro and ace identities will play a much bigger part, as I have become more comfortable in those pieces of my identity since then. I’ve also written about chest-binding as an aspect of trans healthcare with Dr Sarah Pietzmeier in our research-based nonfiction comic Breathe: Journeys To Healthy Binding and I’m currently working on my middle grade fiction debut with fellow nonbinary cartoonist Lucky Srikumar about a junior high kid wrestling with questions of gender, sexuality, romance, creativity, and friendship. 

Marina Martinez: Hello! I’m honoured to be included amongst such a great group of panelists. By day I work as a project manager in art logistics (extremely niche!), and by night I am a freelance developmental editor for graphic novels and genre fiction. I am also the Director of Panel Programming and Special Events at GeekGirlCon, a convention in Seattle dedicated to uplifting traditionally underrepresented groups in geek spaces. In my work as an editor I am passionate about helping authors tell their own stories in their own voices, and helping them to craft a work they are proud of.

Leanne Schwartz: So honored to join you all! My master’s is in Education, and I’ve taught English and drama and write fantasy and romance across the young adult and adult categories. A Prayer For Vengeance came out in 2023 and To A Darker Shore and My Kind Of Trouble in 2024. My books all feature acespec characters, ranging from subtle representations to major plot points, and tend to explore the interplay of asexuality, autism, and gender non-conformity, as well as the flip side of purity culture where religious institutions enforce allosexual compliance. My work draws on Italian history and mythology as well as musical theater influences, which isn’t as disparate as it may sound; Catholics love spectacle and drama. I’m also active in the movement to stop book bans.

Q: What has your journey in publishing been like? How has that aligned, or not, with your journey as an asexual spectrum person?

Michelle: I would say that my journey in publishing has played a major role in me gradually accepting and coming home to my most authentic self—including discovering my asexuality. Art was always my first love, but as I grew older, the pressures of being a child of immigrants and pursuing financial stability above all else meant that art was pushed to the back burner. After eight years of not making art, I rediscovered it during lockdown. Creating illustrations and comics helped me process and understand so many things about myself, including my queerness. I came out during my first year in the publishing industry, and in part felt empowered to do so from seeing other queer creators being vocal and proud about their identities. One book in particular, Ace by Angela Chen, played a huge formative part in my journey. Ace was released shortly after I began questioning if I was ace myself. Reading the book for the first time felt so validating, and it definitely helped me affirm that I was ace and learn to redefine the way I navigated the world and my relationships.

Lilly: I’d always wanted to be an author. In my third-grade yearbook, I wrote that this was my dream! For a while, though, I’d given up on creative writing because there was this sort of belief when I was just starting graduate school that you couldn’t be “a serious scholar” and “a serious creator.” (I do feel like this is slowly changing!) I was actually in a fandom during the Covid-19 lockdown and happened upon a tweet by Xiran Jay Zhao about PitchWars, a mentorship program that sadly no longer exists that paired authors with unagented writers. I got very lucky that my mentor, Emery Lee, picked my manuscript for PitchWars and that book became my passion project during a very difficult time. I learned a lot from Emery about the industry, about writing, and about revising. Like many others, I was also learning more about my queerness at the same time–it was actually through a fandom community I was very active in during lockdown that I found words to articulate my queerness. It took me a while to understand that my romance books were, by virtue of me being on the ace spectrum, ace-spec romances! Needless to say, it was hard to sell that YA manuscript–we had so many “almost”s–and I do think it came down to the industry’s lack of understanding that romance and “spice”–that romantic and sexual attraction–are separate things, and therefore having a queer, specifically asexual story means having different narrative beats. In a rapidly changing market, this can be a hard sell, and I’ve found this particularly true in YA. I’m still crossing my fingers that this manuscript has a future home one day! 

Maia: My writing and my undercovering of language for my own identity have been very intertwined as well. I started drawing a series of little black and white diary comics in fall 2016 when I was struggling with how to come out as nonbinary to my friends, family, and professional community. Even though I was already out as queer, coming out as trans felt much harder, in part because I had so little vocabulary to explain it. The diary comics eventually became the very first draft of my memoir, and in the process of writing about gender I ended up needing to write about sex, sexuality, and asexuality as well. I think asexuality is one thread in a braid with gender and queerness that make up the very core of who I am. I’m very grateful that I found an editor, Andrea Colvin, who championed my story of identity exploration from the very beginning and not only helped me pitch the book to the publisher but guided me with very generous editorial support through its publication. It was very important to me that my traditional publishing debut included my queer identity; I never wanted to step into the literary world without that part of myself clearly visible and known. 

Marina: It was actually working with Michelle on her debut Somewhere In The Gray that gave me the push to start taking editing seriously. I had been considering a career shift for a while but was unsure of what that looked like. It wasn’t until I started working with her informally that I realized not only did I really enjoy the developmental process, but I was also pretty good at it! My undergraduate degree is in Animation/Illustration so I have a background in visual storytelling, and working with graphic novels felt like a natural way to marry my interests in storytelling and art. My journey to publishing didn’t really have much to do with realizing I was ace, but reading absolutely did. I have always been a voracious reader, especially of fanfiction, and in 2020 that only increased. Like Lilly, it was through participation in fandom during lockdown that helped me really understand my queer identity. I got really into BTS during the summer of that year and it was while reading fic in that fandom that I saw my own experiences both reflected back at me and named. I had only ever been exposed to a very narrow definition of asexuality, one that equated asexuality with aromanticism. I always assumed that because I didn’t fit that definition I wasn’t ace, but it turns out that I just needed to understand it was a spectrum rather than a rigid mold. 

Michelle: Quick shout-out to Marina, the best sounding board, editor, and platonic soulmate I could ask for! It was so helpful to work on my pitch for Somewhere In The Gray which a fellow BIPOC ace person who also deeply understood the messages about asexuality that I was trying to convey.

Leanne: Yes, just like Marina I had only known a narrow definition of asexuality, but discovering the spectrum and naming my demisexuality years ago I think improved my craft, helping me to finally understand my own characters in such important ways and to tell the kinds of stories that made sense to me. I’ve always loved romantic arcs, but shied away from writing romance because of my discomfort with the more physical aspect of it, until I could put it in this framework. And like Maia, I’m grateful I had time to feel more sure of myself and my identity and what I wanted to say before getting published. It was a long journey for me to that point where my work was ready; I was lucky enough to participate in two mentorship programs, Author Mentor Match and Pitch Wars too, with a wonderful demi mentor, Alechia Dow; her book The Sound Of Stars was so encouraging in how to write demisexuality on the page. Although even when I’m not particularly trying to, readers and reviewers point out my protagonists’ aceness; I was so excited to explore it as a central part of the hero Kyrian’s arc in To A Darker Shore, but enough people shouted out Milo in A Prayer for Vengeance and Alesta’s demi rep too, that by the time my adult debut released I felt more comfortable sharing about the hero being acespec even in a way that’s just, this is how he is and it’s not necessarily a big deal, which mirrored my own experience putting what had been a really private thing to me out there so publicly in my books. But it was a delight to then connect with so many other acespec authors writing similar rep, and readers too.

Q: What are some of the challenges of being ace in publishing and/or writing ace stories?

Michelle: When it comes to writing ace stories, I feel like asexuality is still among the lesser known LGBTQIA+ identities. Many people—even other queer people!—still have misconceptions about what it means to be asexual (i.e. believing that all aces are also aromantic, all aces are sex-repulsed, demisexual people are just “picky”, aces can’t have children or get married, and many, many others)! When writing Somewhere In The Gray, it was a challenge to strike a balance between how much to explain and educate the reader without bogging down the story with too much exposition. In the end, I hope I was able to find a happy medium. 

Lilly: Like I mentioned above, and like I’ve written for Bookish Brews before (thank you!), having an ace character or ace storyline will necessarily change a story’s structure. I think that’s what we need to understand as an industry and what I hope editors and salespeople at the top can understand, too. Readers are hungry for diverse stories, in the deepest sense of the word. But having a character from a marginalized background will change expected story beats: you can’t just take an allosexual Western romance structure and “slot” an asexual main character in and call it a day. I’ve talked to my wonderful friend and brilliant author, Leanne Schwartz, about this too–we want to write slow burn! We know the allosexual story beats, but an ace character’s attraction to their love interest, even down to the pacing, the metaphors (not necessarily like sparks!), the timelines, will be different. And we should make room for the beautiful, wide range of ways in which we relate and love one another. 

Maia: The main challenge I’ve faced when thinking about future ace and aro stories I want to tell is: how big a part of the narrative does it need to be in order to be satisfying? If I mention a character is ace, but the story is not a romance, how much will it even come up in the story? I think being ace shapes a lot of my world-view, especially in terms of how I plan for the future, where I want to live, and what people I chose to build my life around (primarily family and friends since I don’t have a partner and am not interested in one). I haven’t figured out how to fully weave these threads into a character or story in the way I want to yet. Hopefully one day! 

Leanne: That is such a good point about even the metaphors around acespec attraction! And the pacing issue can be so tricky; I’ve seen some books called out for not being authentic demi rep because of the sped-up timeline that’s pretty much demanded in young adult fantasy, but authors are having to thread this needle of creating characters the way they want and sharing important messages with their readers, and addressing market trends and editorial feedback to tighten up plot timelines. While I loved writing childhood friends to lovers in To a Darker Shore, that set-up doesn’t work for every story I want to tell, so definitely yes to more openness and understanding from publishing and readerships. The other hard thing, like Michelle noted, is the lack of understanding of asexuality still. I’ve been sent angry reviews saying my book’s not queer as marketed; I think people see Alesta on the cover and the LGBTQIA+ metadata tag and assume she’s a lesbian (like four other characters are!), but the possibility of her and Kyrian being acespec is almost invisible still to some. And amid the push for more spice in adult romance and fantasy, it can feel like moving against the tide to go for the super slow burn, but it’s also a concern that some readers or gatekeepers might write your book off, expecting no heat, because they don’t know the spectrum of asexuality, woven together with the common infantilization of autistic and fat characters.

Marina: Since I’m not a writer I’ll speak to some of the challenges I’ve faced being ace. The primary challenge for me has been explaining my identity to others that are unfamiliar with the “A” in LGBTQIA+. Part of it comes from my own intense desire to not talk about anything emotional (hello Scorpio!) but part of it is because I feel resentful that I even need to explain ‘why’ I’m the way I am. I’ve found that even queer friends are unfamiliar with asexuality, and what they do know is quite limited. I imagine that some of these conflicts exist in the writing ace characters, where the writer is put in the position to educate rather than just tell a story. 

Q: What would you like to see more of regarding ace representation in publishing? 

Michelle: I would love to see more representations of characters on the ace spectrum exploring romantic and/or sexual relationships on their own terms (including ace characters exploring sexual relationships and aro characters exploring romantic relationships), and generally more characters who are across a broader range of the ace spectrum. Most of the ace representation I saw before coming out myself was aroace characters who were sex-repulsed and had no interest in pursuing romantic relationships. Oftentimes, ace or ace-coded characters in media are also portrayed as soulless automatons or shy wallflowers. While these can represent the experiences of some people, seeing a small facet of the ace experience can perpetuate the misconception that all people in our community feel this way. In reality, being asexual is a huge spectrum just like any other identity. I am excited to see more ace stories about characters that have varied experiences and fall on different parts of this vast spectrum. This is a major reason why I ended up writing my own graphic novel! I wanted to see more gray-ace characters that reflected my experience of being somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. 

Lilly: Totally agree with Michelle. I would love to see stories and story structures that shine a light on the many beautiful, creative ways in which queer folks, especially on the ace spectrum, relate, love, and care for one another. How we form community and friendship, how we carve out ways of being that provide alternatives to the rather limited mainstream. I would also like to see more of this representation overlap and intersect with other kinds of marginalized rep: what kind of stories can come from being an Asian ace character, for example? How about disabled and ace rep and relationality? 

Maia: So many of the ace people I know in real life end up becoming real center points of their friend groups/communities/polycules/homes. I am very interested in the way ace people build webs of relationships, including very deep intimate ones, with many people. I am interested in ace friendship, in ace group parenting, in ace polyamory, and in how ace people find each other through niche communities like fandom. Two different times in my life I have built friend groups of six people around love of a shared hobby/interest only to realize somewhere between four to six of the people in the group were on the ace spectrum. How did this happen? We didn’t make friends because we were ace; we made friends because we all loved the same fantasy series or kpop group. And yet, at some point we looked around the room to realize everyone in it was ace. Where are the novels about this phenomenon? 

Marina: Echoing both Michelle and Lilly, I would love to see more stories about ace characters exploring romantic/sexual relationships with either other ace or allo characters. Like Lilly, I would also love to see more stories about the intersection of asexuality with other identities! I think that so often stories that center ace characters focus only on asexuality, treating it as a central identity rather than just one part of what makes them human! I think my being ace is honestly the least exciting thing about me. 

Leanne: I’m seconding as well that I’d love to see more stories of ace romances that show the middle of the spectrum, and all the different ways people in those relationships can navigate them. And the overlap with other identities! For instance, I do think some autistics in all their intensity can fall in love very fast and feel this complete connection and trust with the right person, so how does that look playing out with one or more ace characters? What about parsing sensory sensitivities and sex aversion or ambivalence, or aceness versus religious strictures in the contemporary context of some assuming aces are “puriteens”? I’m also longing to see adult characters engaging in a physical relationship taking things very, very slow, with lots of time for processing, because that is so authentic to me.

Q: What’s your favorite thing about being ace? What does being ace mean to you?

Michelle: Seeing love and relationships through a different lens. We live in a world that perpetuates the belief that romantic attraction and sexual attraction are intertwined. In addition to this, the world often prioritizes romantic relationships above platonic ones. I love that being ace has allowed me to live outside of those confines, especially as an alloromantic, gray-ace person. Understanding asexuality has given me the language to redefine romantic relationships on my own terms, heal from my past sexual trauma, advocate for myself and my boundaries, and nurture deep friendships. I am proud to be ace and to tell ace stories—ones that will hopefully help other people on the ace spectrum feel seen, validated, and empowered to be themselves. 

Lilly: Echoing Michelle, I love that aceness has given me a lens and language for challenging normative scripts we have about relationships, love, care, and community. Several years ago, one of my (allosexual) friends told me in a lamenting way that “the only people [she] could rely on were [her] boyfriend and mom.” This statement made me so profoundly sad: it is reflective of the way allosexual scripts are normalized, isolating, and anti-community, hinged upon the sole idea of the nuclear family and no one else. But this statement also made me upset because I was there to meet up with her, catch up, and show support. It was untrue. In my adult life, I have been very blessed with queer friends and community: we have driven each other to the airport, to the hospital; we have nursed each other to health; we have cried with one another and seen each other through grief. That, too, is true love. This kind of love has been equally as special to me as romantic love. This kind of love helped me survive.

Maia: My favorite thing about being ace is the same as my favorite thing about being trans; it opens up one’s ability to question all of the assumptions about what a life should be. When you start questioning your gender, or the allosexual social scripts, you realize that many things that are pushed as requirements for a happy life are in fact optional choices. Getting married, having children, having sex, keeping your birth name, dating, living as just one gender, being monogamous, being cis- literally all of these things are optional! Pick the ones you want, leave the ones you don’t want behind! 

Marina: Like all of the other panelists, I love that being ace has allowed me to challenge the idea of what love, romance, and relationships have to look like. By existing outside of the “norm” I’ve been able to decide which social scripts I want to abide by and which ones don’t serve me. I feel like being ace has allowed me to build deeper and richer friendships based on platonic love. 

Leanne: I love how being ace frees me up to see the diverse beauty and value in everyone. And like you all said, once you break out of allo norms, you can question all the other rules and binaries and expectations and shape the life you truly want, that truly serves your needs and the greater community. Like Michelle said, I’m grateful to get to share that with readers in my books, and celebrate our way of being in the world and being ourselves.

Q: What are some ace resources that you’d recommend to readers? 

Michelle: I always have to shout-out Ace by Angela Chen, which I mentioned above! AVEN (Asexuality Visibility and Education Network; they are the oldest online ace community) and the Asexuality Archives also helped me a lot when I was questioning. For aces who are in relationships with allosexual partners, the Allo and Ace Podcast has great resources on how to communicate with each other and understand your boundaries. I also recommend A Quick And Easy Guide To Asexuality by Molly Muldoon and Will Hernandez as an accessible introduction.

Lilly: Ace by Angela Chen also changed my life and I incorporate it in my teaching as much as possible. Besides AVEN, I would also recommend folks find a local ace support group! There are book clubs, community organizations, and writing groups. And if your area doesn’t have one yet, I encourage you to make one of your own if you have the energy and time! Even a low-key chat group can be lovely. I’ve found ace writer groups (like this one!) so nourishing, heartwarming, important, and fun.

Maia: I will third the rec for Ace by Angela Chen because that is really one of the most powerful ace books currently available. I’d like to shout out youtuber Marshall John Blunt for ace videos from a Black AMAB perspective. I’d also like to add the podcast Sounds Fake But Okay, a long-running show where two friends (one demisexual and one aroace) talk about love, relationships, sexuality, and more. They’ve just released a book also called Sounds Fake But Okay! I gave a previous interview for the book Ace Notes: Tips And Tricks On Existing In An Allo World edited by Michelle Kirichanskaya. And cartoonist Rebecca Burgess has written about asexuality and autism in their memoir How To Be Ace as well as their other works for kids and teens. 

Marina: I will fourth the rec for Ace by Angela Chen! While there are parts of the book that didn’t resonate as strongly with me, I felt like it gave me a vocabulary to talk about asexuality with other people in a way that was easy to understand. The other panelists have provided a number of recs I’ve never heard of and I am SO excited to check them out. I’m going to listen to Sounds Fake But Okay immediately! 

Leanne: You all have covered the nonfiction resources so well, I’ll chime in with some novels and short story anthology recs, as fiction of course can illuminate so much for readers questioning or exploring for themselves. Being Ace is a fantastic YA anthology with stories displaying such creative subversion of allo storytelling norms, with aroace characters and asexual romance and representation across the spectrum. So Let Them Burn and This Ends In Embers by Kamilah Cole and What Wakes the Bells by Elle Tesch are two recent YA fantasies with wonderful on the page demi rep, and for adult demi romance, Role Playing by Cathy Yardley is stellar.

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