Alex Gino

Alex Gino writes for young readers and is nonbinary, using they and them. Their first book appeared in 2015 as George: a fourth-grader everyone else takes for a boy, who knows she is a girl, and who wants to play Charlotte in the class production of Charlotte's Web because it would let her be seen. It won the Stonewall Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and it has been among the most frequently challenged books in American school libraries. In 2021 Gino said the original title had been a mistake, since it put on the cover the name the character does not want, and Scholastic reissued the book in April 2022 as Melissa. Copies still circulate under the retired title. Gino has since written You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P! and Rick.