On June 26, 2023, the American Library Association Rainbow Round Table held the Stonewall Award Ceremony as part of their Youth Media Awards and the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

I’m truly grateful to the ALA Rainbow Round Table and the Stonewall Award Committee for choosing THE REAL RILEY MAYES as a 2023 Stonewall Honor Book. The best part of this experience was meeting all the librarians who serve on the committee. They are each so devoted to LGBTQ+ books for kids, and yet this is also just a small part of their amazing creative lives.

Below is a video of my thank you remarks at the ceremony.

In it, I talk about the first librarian in my life, the library scene in RILEY MAYES, and how wonderful it is that librarians help us all with our questions. My partner Carol took the video, and there’s just a line or two missing from the beginning, as best as I can remember, which is also included below:

Hello! Thank you! 

Wow, when you’re sitting in the front row, you don’t realize how many people are in the room, until you get up here to the podium. *LAUGHTER* Maybe that’s a good metaphor for what we do when we make these books. We work on them so much alone, and then suddenly, there’s all these PEOPLE here reading them. 

Thank you for loving this book, this handmade thing. I couldn’t ask for love from a greater group of people than librarians. I want to tell you about the first librarian in my life–”

speech continues in video…