Alex Sanchez is the author of the Rainbow Boys trilogy of teen novels, along with The God Box, Getting It, and the Lambda Award-winning middle-grade novel So Hard to Say. His novel, Bait, won the 2009 Florida Book Award Gold Medal for YA fiction. Alex received his master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Old Dominion University and for many years worked as a youth and family counselor. His newest novel, Boyfriends with Girlfriends, was released in 2011.

 

Rainbow Boys was selected as a 2002 "Best Book for Young Adults" by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. As a result of the extraordinary reception to Rainbow Boys, Alex was honored as a "Flying Start" by Publishers Weekly.

Rainbow High, the sequel to Rainbow Boys, was released in fall 2003 and also selected as a Lambda Literary Award finalist. His short story, "If You Kiss a Boy" appeared in the fall 2003 anthology 13: Thirteen Stories about the Agony and Ecstasy of Being Thirteen, edited by James Howe.

 

In 2004, Alex published So Hard to Say, a novel for younger readers, which won the Lambda Literary Award. In 2005, the third novel in the Rainbow series, Rainbow Road, was published, completing the Rainbow trilogy.

 

Getting It, 2006, won a Myers Outstanding Book Award. The story centers on two teenage boys, one straight and the other gay. Imagine QUEER EYE for the straight teen BOY!

The God Box (2007) focuses on a Christian teen boy, who doesn't want to accept he's gay.

Bait (2009) tells the story ofteenage boy troubled by secrets from his past. The novel received the 2009 Florida Book Award Gold Medal for YA fiction and the 2011 Tomas Rivera Mexican-American Children's Book Award.

Boyfriends with Girlfriends (2011) explores the lives of bisexual teens.

 

Alex's dream to write began in college with an unpublished children's picture book, but then he went on to work for ten years as a counselor of youth and families both in the United States and overseas.

 

During that time, Alex began to shape a novel about gay teens and their families. As he put the story on paper, it became apparent he was writing the book he'd wanted and needed to read when he was a teenager--a book that would have told him: "It's okay to be who you are."

 

Although Alex intended to write an upbeat and affirming story that would encourage empathy, he didn't realize until after the release of Rainbow Boys that his book would become an agent of social change, one that School Library Journal compared with Judy Blume's Forever and praised as able to "open eyes and change lives."

 

Since the publication of Rainbow Boys, Alex has found himself inundated with emails from young people empowered by the book to come out to their parents or to start Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in their schools.

Alex received his master's in guidance and counseling from Old Dominion University. Born in Mexico to parents of German and Cuban heritage, he currently resides in Florida and Thailand.