This year’s Pride is different. More than ever before, Pride is an opportunity to showcase the intersecting systems that marginalize and oppress LGBTQ+ communities. The LGBTQ+ community and allies everywhere are coming together to speak to what truly matters – equality.

The community of readers and writers on Wattpad, the world’s leading social storytelling platform, elevating millennial and Gen Z voices every day — not just during the month of June. Whether it’s creating space for Indian perspectives on LGBTQ+ experiences, marginal queer voices in romance, or non-binary perspectives on acceptance and diverse stories in a safe space within the millions of readers on Wattpad.

Ananya Madhusoodanan is a nineteen year-old college student from Mysore who explored her own sexual identity through the LGBTQ+ characters she created in her stories. Through her writing, she wants the readers to know that they are not alone. There will always be someone who understands and listens to them.

Her story, How to Disappear Completely  has over 181K reads. It is a coming of age story where Colin Perez wants to disappear but Quentin helps him navigate his way out of the rules he’s made for himself.

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Upasa Borah was born and brought up in Assam, and is currently pursuing Economics honours from Miranda House. She is also a spoken word poet who’s performed at many big and small stages. For her, writing more stories featuring queer characters is a big step in normalising queer lives. Very few people are interested in reading articles or news, but stories have a large outreach.

Her story Love-Love, a popular Wattpad story with over 153K reads,is a humorous take on the superhero genre featuring queer characters. Super Storm is your typical superhero with stunning blonde hair and high morale. Gravel is your typical supervillain with a slight obsession over a certain someone’s beautiful blonde hair and a mission he doesn’t want to complete.

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Manasha Sahana is an American Tamilian currently in the senior year of high school. Through her story The Wrong Indian Flag, she wanted her story to be more than just being about someone from the community but also talk about culture and friendship and self-love and acceptance that go along with it. She believes that only when people read about communities apart from themselves, do they learn and grow

The Wrong Indian Flag is the story of Shilpa, an aspiring journalist, who is engaged to Raj but develops feelings for her classmate Alisha. She struggles with navigating her own sexual feelings and trying to come out to her conservative family.

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While Tanya S doesn’t like being identified as a writer, she chose Wattpad to tell the story of her journey as a lesbian from Uttar Pradesh so the community could have someone to relate to while dealing with the actual struggles of life as an LGBTQ+ person. 

Through her first person account My Life, Tanya chronicles the difficulties of growing up lesbian in a conservative environnment and her journey in overcoming the problems of acceptance she faced to reach where she is today.

26 June 2020