'Simon' Author Becky Albertalli Comes Out as Bisexual

Becky Albertalli, the author of the book that was turned into the movie Love, Simon, has come out as bisexual.

The 37-year-old author wrote the beloved book “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda” and the recent YA novel “Leah on the Offbeat,” which follows a love story between two girls.

“I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve been happily married to a guy for almost ten years. I have two kids and a cat. I’ve never kissed a girl. I never even realized I wanted to,” Becky wrote in an essay published on Medium. “But if I rewind further, I’m pretty sure I’ve had crushes on boys and girls for most of my life. I just didn’t realize the girl crushes were crushes.”

Becky, who has previously identified as straight in interviews, wrote about how she was criticized for being a cis woman writing about the experiences of LGBTQ+ characters.

“I was frequently mentioned by name, held up again and again as the quintessential example of allocishet inauthenticity,” she said. “I was a straight woman writing shitty queer books for the straights, profiting off of communities I had no connection to.”

It wasn’t until she wrote the love story between two girls in “Leah on the Offbeat” that she began to question her own identity.

Becky says it’s necessary for her to now come out in response to the criticism she has received.

“Honestly, I’m doing this because I’ve been scrutinized, subtweeted, mocked, lectured, and invalidated just about every single day for years, and I’m exhausted. And if you think I’m the only closeted or semi-closeted queer author feeling this pressure, you haven’t been paying attention,” she said.

She concluded the article by saying, “I’m bi. Sorry it took me so long to get here. But then again, at least the little red coming out book I needed was already on my shelf (in about thirty different languages). I think I finally know why I wrote it.”

Love, Simon was given a spinoff TV series on Hulu and we have some news about that!