Bonnie Swanson

General: Across the board for all age groups, she wants to see underrepresented authors. (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, etc)

She has very eclectic tastes and sometimes doesn’t know what she’s looking for until she reads it.

Adult/YA:

• Likes: She is dying for a good speculative psychological horror mystery! (Think a gender-bent/gay Sherlock Holmes, set in Middle Earth or outer space, with all the creepy feels of Silence of the Lambs!) Normalized queerness where it isn't the focus of the plot or subplot. She’s a sucker for a good romantasy (HEA required). Issue-driven stories that address timeless social issues and the people who fight to change them, stories where the underdog wins, non-traditional characters who feel real (even if they are in outer space), accessible literary prose, the Oxford comma.
• Dislikes stories with violence against women/children/animals, erotica, misogyny, alpha males, and romances where the heroine dumps the main love interest for no reason and goes for the villain.

Picture Books: The story must be child-centered and give them all the agency. They have enough grownups telling them what to do in their real lives; in books kids should get to be the heroes. Fiction or Nonfiction is okay and if it rhymes, it must be absolutely PERFECT!

Middle Grade: Bonnie is SUPER selective! But she likes stories based on kid-focused issues that have a touch (or more) of magic. She would love to see an aged-up version of the Junie B. Jones series with a nonbinary main character in a magical school setting. No animal stories please where they are the characters.