Sometimes Family Is Found One Story at a Time
June celebrates stories of belonging, identity, and chosen family. During Pride Month, we honor the communities that remind us we are never alone. For many people, found family becomes a source of support, acceptance, and home when those things aren't always found where they're expected.
This month, Salient Books authors reflect on the relationships that shape their stories, the meaning of found family, and the comfort they hope readers will discover within their stories.
Featured Authors
Featured Book
💚 What does found family mean to you?
Found family is the people who support you through the most challenging parts of your life. These people are your constants: they are there for both the good AND the bad times, the small and the large. This can be both blood relatives or close friends, and sometimes even people who don’t live anywhere near you physically. Some of our closest, staunchest friends live halfway across the country.
Found family has your back no matter what.
🏡 Have you ever read or written a relationship, friendship, or community that felt like home?
Our fantasy series, Faith and Ruin, has strong themes of found family. It begins with a priestess-in-training and her bodyguards, and turns into a group of close friends who have each others’ backs through challenges none of them expected. They closer throughout the series, and support each other even when it’s hard.
We love writing stories with this theme, because there is something uniquely beautiful about reading themes of love and friendship that matter. It gives us hope, makes us feel that, even in the dark times, there are people who love us no matter what. As long as you have your family/support network, you can get through any hardship. We need stories like that, especially during times like these.
🌿 Why do you think stories about belonging resonate so deeply with readers?
Everyone wants a place where they belong; that’s just human nature. We aren’t meant to be alone. Humans are inherently social creatures, and burdens are so much easier to bear when you have a friend there to help you along the way.
🌈 If your work includes LGBTQIA+ representation, what does that representation mean to you or your story?
We wrote the world of Aukera to be a queer-normative world, which was important to us. Though it’s not the main theme of the story, as neither one of us is considered queer and we don’t feel those stories are ours to tell, it’s an important cause we believe strongly in, as many of our friends, family, and loved ones identify as queer in some way.
📖 What do you hope readers take away from stories that celebrate connection, acceptance, and chosen family?
We want readers to believe that found family is possible, and that the connections between all of our characters feel realistic, relatable, and beautiful.
Continue Exploring
Looking for more stories about belonging, identity, and community?
Explore our Love Is Love Collection and discover books that celebrate the many ways people find connection, acceptance, and home.