Alice Oseman

When I think about Alice Oseman, a frame from their Heartstopper comic pops into my head. In it, Nick Nelson wraps a blanket around Charlie Spring’s shoulders and says, simply, “There.”

To me, that’s Alice’s work in a nutshell. Her books—and Heartstopper’s pitch-perfect adaptation to a Netflix series—are earnest, heartfelt, and tender. They sit with real pain and hold space for self-discovery. And, most of all, they’re told with such palpable care. Reading them feels like being loved.

I can only imagine what it would have been like to grow up with Alice’s work. Even as an adult, it’s altered my brain chemistry. It’s been a rough few years for so many queer people, especially young people—but I keep coming back to one spectacular truth: every future generation of queer kids, until the end of time, will live in a world where Alice Oseman’s stories exist.

Albertalli is an author