Gay teen fiction is a subgenre that overlaps with LGBTQ+ literature and young adult literature. This article covers books about gay and bisexual teenage characters who are male. The genre of young adult literature is usually considered to begin with Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer, which was published in 1942. Seventeenth Summer is often credited with starting young adult literature because it was one of the first adolescent problem novels. Critics trace the origin of the "new realism" or "problem novel" in teen fiction to the period from 1967 through 1969, during which S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders, Paul Zindel's The Pigman, and other pivotal titles were published. These young adult novels were characterized by candor, unidealized characters and settings, colloquial and realistic language, and plots that portrayed realistic problems faced by contemporary young adults that did not necessarily find resolution in a happy ending. Because gay young adult novels often center on problems that gay teen characters encounter because of their sexuality, these books are often classified as examples of the "problem novel" genre. History In 1969, the publication of I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip by John Donovan announced the arrival of gay and lesbian literature as a new genre within young adult fiction. To date there are still relatively few titles that fit within this genre, but nonetheless, the books that have been written and published constitute a necessary and unique collection of ideas. In the years from 1969 through 1992, approximately sixty young adult novels with gay/lesbian characters or themes appeared in the United States. The rate of production of this body of literature has roughly doubled over the years, with approximately half (thirty-one) of the books published in the sixteen years from 1969 through 1984, and the rest (twenty-nine) published in the following eight years, from 1985 through 1992. From 1998 to 2003, 42 more novels were published with LGBT characters. Publication Despite the apparent wider acceptance of these novels, publishing them can be difficult. Geography Club, about a high school gay support group, was rejected seventeen times before it was published. Author Brent Hartinger said, "Editors told my agent again and again that there was no market for a book like this, and all my agent's agent-friends told her she was wasting her time on a gay teen book." Publishers often seem motivated by the desire to maximize their profits, and librarians