2018 Scholarship Results

Thank you to everyone who submitted to this year's Make It Safe Project Writing Scholarship! We received over 100 submissions from teens around the country. We are excited to announce this year's winners.

Winner: Donovan Thomas, author of "03/24/17"
Runner-up: Jet Elbualy, author of "Years in the Life"

Anthology authors (non-anonymous): Charlotte A., Pheebi C., Diego D., Kimia G., Andrew H., Makayla J., Emily K., Victor L., Calvin L., Jamie L., Myles M., Taylor M., Erin O., Hannah P., Adriana P., Sasha P., Sofia P., Zoey P., Max R., Max S.

We want to extend a special thank you to AdmissionWise Consulting LLC for sponsoring the scholarship, all those who submitted for sharing their work, and our tremendous team of judges for evaluating submissions.

Check back in January 2019 for information on next year's scholarship!

You Too Can Save Lives

Note: If you or someone you know needs help, you can call The Trevor Project‘s 24/7 confidential hotline: 1-866-488-7386

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by Alex Sanchez, author of Rainbow Boys

When my first novel, Rainbow Boys, was about to be published my editor asked me, “Do you realize this book is going to save lives?”

I wondered if he’d confused my book with someone else’s. But then the novel came out, and I began to receive emails from readers. Some said the protagonists had become their role models. Others said they’d read the book over and over when they felt lonely and afraid. And then came responses like this one:

I’m proud to say that reading your books and others like them, as well as getting help and talking to people, I have gone from being mad at myself for who I was, cutting and hurting myself and being suicidal, to a happy, expressive, fun kid that I feel great to be.

My editor had been right. With each new book, I’ve been privileged to receive many more emails with messages like: I thought about suicide multiple times but could not go through with it. Your books gave me the inspiration to go on living and to never give up.

Or this one: I was going through a very rough part in my life…  suffering from depression, on the verge of suicide, and then I read your books and was moved. … I don’t want to sound corny and say that you saved my life, but I can say you played a role in it.  I am so happy with my life today, which is something I never thought I’d be able to say. Thank you, again

It can be a little overwhelming to read such heartfelt messages. I never imagined that my stories could have such impact. No wonder some people have banned my books from schools and libraries while others fight to put them—and keep them—on their shelves.

And yet in spite of more and more books about LGBT teens, the pressure to self-destruct remains too overpowering for some young people. Their stories can be heartbreaking. Stories like Randy’s.

In 2003, I drove back and forth across America, writing my road novel about three gay and bisexual teenage boys, Rainbow Road. As I traveled I typed up a first draft on my laptop and got excruciating carpal tunnel syndrome. After I finished my trip I settled in Miami. I couldn’t type anymore, and a second draft was due to my publisher. So, I prayed, “God, I need your help. If you want this book published, please help me find a way.”

Miraculously, the next day I opened my inbox and found an email from a 15 year-old boy named Randy:

Hey, I want to tell u that your books are awesome…… can u believe I read Rainbow Boys in one morning? I can’t wait to read the third Rainbow Book!!!…. Now, I want to ask you 2 favors. First, I really want u to come to Miami to sign my books… second, I want u to come visit my school where there are a lot of homophobics. In my first year, I was called lots of names and constantly humiliated. And now that my second year is coming, I don’t want to experience the same things I will really really really appreciate that u answer me. Like soon

I remembered my prayer from the previous day and thought: Hmm… So I wrote back:

Hi Randy, Thanks for your email.  I’m actually in Miami, writing the third RAINBOW book, and I need someone to type it.  Do you have a computer? Can you type well?  Would you like a summer job? Also, I need to know if you’re out to your parents because I’d need to have their permission. Thanks!

To which Randy wrote back: Dude, what’s up? Yes, I can type well, and fast, and me and my mom can really really really use some extra money, but I’m not out to her yet. It’s hard to tell her, not because of how she is going to react, but because of my father. He is way too “machista.” So why is it an issue if I’m out to my mom or not? I will love to do the work, but I’m just going to type a book (actually not just a book, but the third part of the bestest books I ever read!).

To which I replied: My concern about your being out to your parents is this:  Your mom might start asking you questions about the book you’re typing.  I don’t want you to do something that will cause you problems with your family.  Please think carefully about it.

Later that day I got this response: Dude, guess what? I just came out to my mom!.. It was so hard, but she handled it sooo well. God I still can’t believe it!!!!. SO? When am I going to start typing? Well, actually, I’m sort of busy right now (so many people are asking me too many questions about me coming out to my mom!!!), so later!

Randy and I began to meet at the public library. I would give him my handwritten pages that he would type up and email to me. In the process I got to know him. He told me about his crushes on other teen boys. He showed me his favorite music videos and brought me photos of his little brother who he loved. He revealed he was bulimic and would often make himself throw up so he could stay thin. He also said his dad hadn’t taken his coming out well. He’d told Randy he no longer wanted him as his son. I listened to Randy and tried to be encouraging.

After he finished typing my manuscript, we kept in touch. Over the next few years, he sometimes emailed me and I sent him copies of each new book. And then I received an email:

Hi Alex, I don’t know if you remember Randy. He’s the boy who typed a book for you. I don’t remember which one. I was his boyfriend when he typed your book. Sadly, I found out a few days ago that he committed suicide.

I was devastated. Now, years later my heart still clenches at the memory. He was 19 when he committed suicide. I share his story with you to honor him and his life.

We never know for certain why someone commits suicide. But research shows that for many young people it can be due in part to judgment and rejection.

A few years ago the highly esteemed professional journal, Pediatrics, published a controlled, objective study that compared two sets of parents. In one group, parents had accepted or were neutral to their child being gay. In a second group, parents had rejected their child.

The study found that teens like Randy who experienced rejection from a parent were eight times more likely to attempt suicide compared with teens whose families may have felt uncomfortable with their gay child, but were neutral or only mildly disapproving.

Well-meaning parents had thought that by trying to change their child, they were helping. When they learned that they were actually putting their child at huge risk, they were shocked.

I’ve come to understand why young people seek role models in LGBT teen characters and how LGBT novels can serve as lifelines. Despite the rapid changes in our society’s acceptance of gay people, many youngsters continue to struggle with rejection and bullying because of their sexual orientation.

Books can help, and you can help get those books into the hands of young people. Through your contribution to the Make it Safe Project, you too can save lives.

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To learn more about Alex and his books, visit www.AlexSanchez.com or sign up here for his occasional email updates.

Would You Hide?

by Laura Preble, author of Out

I’ve written an LGBT-themed book, but I’m not LGBT. Some people don’t see how this is possible, but here’s why it is: I’m a human being.

My book, Out, is a speculative fiction book where opposite-sex couples (perpendiculars) are criminalized, while same-sex couples (parallels) are in the majority and run the theocratic government. It’s really a love story, though; a minister’s son, Chris, finds himself in love with a person his society and his church have told him he cannot love: a girl.

Before the book was even published, people complained about it, and said that I had no right to write this book since I was not LGBT myself, and I couldn’t possibly understand the struggles. Of course, that’s partly true, but that is true for every person on this planet. None of us lives in the other’s shoes. None of us knows what story another person is truly living. The best we can do is try to communicate something true.

As the mother of a gay son, I have seen my share of judgment, discrimination, and downright hatred. No, it wasn’t pointed directly at me, but as anyone who’s had a child knows, when you child is attacked, so are you. I was a teacher in his high school when someone vandalized the school and spray painted on my door, ‘your son is a faggot’.  I had to watch him as he walked proudly around the school, a 6’3 budding drag queen who never apologized for who he was, as comments were whispered and looks were exchanged. I knew he had to change clothes in the teacher’s restroom for four years because the locker room was too painful.

And I helped him fight. I had been the adviser for our schools’ Gay Straight Alliance even before he came out in 8th grade. I’d championed LGBT students throughout my entire teaching career. I stood with him at a school board meeting when he and several of his friends complained when the board supported the hate-based YES ON PROP 8, California’s referendum against gay marriage.  And in large part I wrote my novel because I felt that flipping the reality in such a drastic way might actually make the blind see.

That’s a tall order for a book, I know. But I kept wondering why these people couldn’t understand that love is love. Anatomy is irrelevant. Why could they not understand this? Then it hit me one day. They don’t understand because, in our world, it is inconceivable to them that they would be denied the person they love.

Straight privilege had imbued them with the implied understanding that no one would ever tell them they could not be who they were born to be.

But how to make that clear, and more importantly, how to give it an emotional punch? The answer, to me, was clear. Show a world where straight people couldn’t love other straight people. How would it feel? What would you do? Would you deny who you are? Would you change for your parents? Would you hide? Would you rebel? All the questions our LGBT youth have had to wrestle with for decades were flipped and posed to those who had never considered what it would feel like if it happened to them.

This is why I wrote the book. I wanted someone who is straight to try to feel what it would be like to be disenfranchised. To feel how that inequity festers in the gut, to ultimately feel sympathy, empathy, and the injustice of it all. And maybe if those people feel it, even in a fictional world, they’d begin to have an understanding of why it needs to change.

A Safe Environment

by Bill Torres, Director of Community Resources at The Ali Forney Center

As the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) people grows in our society, more and more.

LGBTQ teens are finding the courage to come out of the closet. Tragically, as many as 25% of these teens are rejected by their families, and many end up homeless on the streets. Homeless LGBTQ teens are more likely than straight homeless teens to be subjected to violence on the streets, and in the homeless shelter system. They suffer from inordinate rates of mental illness, trauma, HIV infection and substance abuse.

The Ali Forney Center (AFC) was started in June of 2002 in response to the lack of safe shelter for LGBTQ youth in New York City. We are committed to providing these young people with safe, dignified, nurturing environments where their needs can be met, and where they can begin to put their lives back together.

AFC is dedicated to promoting awareness of the plight of homeless LGBTQ youth in the United States with the goal of generating responses on local and national levels from government funders, foundations, and the LGBTQ community.

This wonderful gift of books from The Make It Safe Project will help us in our mission to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) youth from the harm of homelessness, and to support them in becoming safe and independent as they move from adolescence to adulthood.