Gary Lonesborough grew up surrounded by stories in his Aboriginal (Yuin) community in New South Wales, Australia. He loved to write his own stories, too. But, as he explained in an essay for the Guardian published last year, he stopped reading and writing around the age of 12, when he realized he was queer. “It was like a dark cloud following me every day,” he wrote. “I became disinterested in my culture, and disinterested in writing and storytelling. I did everything I could to fit in instead.”

Lonesborough, now 27, eventually came out and began writing again. Last year, his debut novel for young adults, The Boy From the Mish, was published to acclaim in his home country. This month, it’s being released in the United States as Ready When You Are (Scholastic, March 1). It’s the story of Jackson, an Aboriginal teen coming to terms with his sexual identity and falling in love with Tomas, another Indigenous boy, who is visiting his family for the summer. In a starred review, Kirkus calls it an “affirming, textured coming-out story.” Lonesborough spoke with us over Zoom from his home in Sydney; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

This is your first book. What inspired you to write it?

I was at a time in my life where I was finally feeling really comfortable in my own skin. I read Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, and that made me realize that I wanted to read a story like that—a love story that centered around an Aboriginal boy who is coming to terms with his sexuality and falling in love for the first time. That book just didn’t exist—I couldn’t find that story. As a writer, I was always waiting for the right story to come along, something that would compel me to write a whole novel. Once I realized that there was this gap in the market—this story that I hadn’t read before—that just inspired me to start writing it.

You mention Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda as an influence on your writing. What other books?

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky when I was 16 or 17. I just loved the way the voice of the character was captured in that book. I was definitely trying, as I was honing my craft, to capture that voice that I really connected with and really, really loved in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Even today, I feel like I’m still chasing that level of intimacy with the character. Another book that really influenced me was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. It made me realize that there are ways to tell Indigenous stories that can be funny and raw and real but entertaining and heartwarming.

I love how real Jackson and Tomas are. In marginalized communities there can be a lot of pressure placed on how characters are represented. Did you feel that?

It was an internal pressure—not wanting to reinforce stereotypes, not wanting to be too negative in the characterizations. But I ultimately decided that I wanted to be real, I wanted to be raw and authentic. I’m telling the story of an Aboriginal character, and there are just a lot of things that need exploring, and if I shy away from them, the reader will be able to see that I’m being false. A lot of the issues that the characters deal with are issues that Aboriginal people face today—alcoholism, poverty, domestic violence, children in foster care, disengagement from school, racism, a troubled relationship with the police. I think that’s something readers connect with when they read the story—the authenticity of the characters. They’re able to connect with Jackson and Tomas because they are very rooted in real-life experiences.

Readers—especially young readers—can tell when you’re trying to make a point or teach a lesson.

Oh, yeah. Growing up, any time I saw an Aboriginal character in a movie or on TV, it always seemed like they were secondary characters, always there just to teach a lesson or educate the viewer. They weren’t real characters with their own journeys or their own arcs. They were just there to serve the writer’s purpose. So that’s something I’m very conscious of when I’m writing, something I try to avoid as much as I can. Like you said, young people can definitely tell when someone’s trying to ram a moral down their throats or teach them something.

In Australia, the book was published with the title The Boy From the Mish. Can you explain a mish for American readers?

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the Australian government decided that Aboriginal people couldn’t look after themselves and needed to be helped. They systematically took families and put them into these missions, small communities where they put in houses and taught English, taught Christianity, and told people not to speak their language, not to practice their culture—basically taught them to be White. A lot of the time, if the government decided to, they’d remove children [from their parents]. So there was a lot of child abuse, a lot of sexual abuse happening in those spaces. Similar, in a way, to the reservations in America. In the book, Jackson has roots that go back to those families that were placed in the mission, and with that comes a lot of intergenerational trauma.

One of the challenges for Jackson, being from this tightknit community, is coming out as queer. Can you talk about that struggle?

Jackson’s story is very much my story, in a way. One of my biggest fears as a teenager was losing that connection to my community. I come from a small country town and a large Aboriginal community in that town, and I feel very connected, I still do. But one of my fears was that being gay might exclude me from that community and particularly, my family. That was the biggest thing that stopped me from coming out. It wasn’t until I left town and moved away to Sydney that I started to feel more comfortable and was able to explore that side of myself. Through Jackson, I wanted to capture and articulate how I felt when I was a teen.

Have you heard from queer readers?

I’ve participated in a couple book clubs of queer teens. I graduated high school in 2013, and the way things have changed—in terms of acceptance of queer people and support for queer teenagers at school—is just amazing. It was really empowering to sit there with six or seven queer kids and talk with them about the book. I spoke with one queer Aboriginal teen who was so excited that there was finally a book they could read that had a character that was like them. They were able to connect with everything in the book, the fears Jackson’s having, the internal monologue he is having were something like what that teen had, almost word for word, in their own head. The only way you can achieve that is by opening up your own vulnerability as a writer.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.