The genre of young adult literature is usually considered to begin with Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer, which was published in 1942. Seventeenth Summer is often accredited with starting young adult literature because it was one of the first adolescent problem novels. Critics trace the origin of the “new realism” or "problem novel" in teen fiction to the period from 1967 through 1969, during which S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Ann Head’s Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, and other pivotal titles were published. These young adult novels were characterized by candor, unidealized characters and settings, colloquial and realistic language, and plots that portrayed realistic problems faced by contemporary young adults that did not necessarily find resolution in a happy ending. Because gay young adult novels often center upon problems that gay teen characters encounter because of their homosexuality, these books are often classified as examples of the "problem novel" genre.

Gay was Toronto's first gay magazine, published almost simultaneously with ASK Newsletter, together Canada's first gay magazines. The earliest periodical anywhere to use 'Gay' in its title. Produced by four Toronto men in a commercial venture, the Gay Publishing Company, Gay ran serious articles, letters to the editor, a diary, gossip columns, a feature called the "Gabrial Club", poetry, fiction, politics and a discrete personals column. 'Gay' was illustrated, usually with photographs of drag queens, but also including 'physique' photography.

Intended for a 'mainstream' gay audience it reflected cautious reformism, defending the rights and normalcy of a constituency living in a hostile environment. This was not unlike the political activism emerging in a few large American and European cities before more confrontational activism. Gay also published on Toronto police raids on bars, and on the calls for social and political change that were beginning to surface.

The first five-hundred-copy issue sold out almost immediately. Printing two thousand copies by issue three, distributed to a number of outlets in Toronto and Montreal. Shortly, Gay expanded into the United States as Gay International. It quickly outstripped American publications' distributions, and by the spring of 1965 it was publishing twenty thousand copies across North America and selling about eight thousand. Publication ended in 1966 when criminal charges were levied against one of its central creators.

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Gay Fashion
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