In this month's episode, I talk to author Adam Sass about his debut novel, Surrender Your Sons, a queer YA thriller set in a conversion therapy center in Costa Rica. Sass is a gay man himself, and he says he wrote Surrender Your Sons not as a story about queer pain, but as one of queer triumph.
Over the course of this hour, we talk about depictions of coming out and conversion therapy in media, the importance of solidarity, and the difficulty of talking honestly about conversion therapy when so many people believe it to be a thing of the past.
Adam Sass is a self-professed gay geek. Though this is his first novel, his short story “98% Graves” was nominated by Writer’s Digest for Best Science Fiction Story in 2015. In addition to his writing, he is a recurring co-host on the popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast Slayerfest98, alongside such special guests as Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. producer Drew Z. Greenberg and_ RuPaul’s Drag Race_ winner Trixie Mattel. He lives in North Carolina with his husband and their dachshunds.