Bill Konigsberg Books In Order

Publication Order of Openly Straight Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Bill Konigsberg is an American author of fiction. He was born in N.Y.C. in 1970. He is married to his husband and resides in Chandler, Arizona.

He is currently a writer but did not always have dreams of writing; in his younger days, he wanted to be either a pro baseball player or a disc jockey or the Indian in the Village People. Expectations of him were high to do well in athletics.

Bill’s parents hoped that he would be a great soccer player. The author’s parents were doomed to be disappointed in his abilities, which were confirmed when he made the lowest team at soccer camp.

He was a student that got mostly B’s during high school. He was also voted by his peers to be someone that was most likely to avoid the idea of doing ‘any real work’ in life. Well, Bill did his best to prove them wrong and passed with flying colors as he held many different jobs during his time working in his early twenties and onward. He was worked for a truck driving school as a driver recruiter, a sales consultant, and a temp for an elevator company.

When he moved to Denver in 1996, he did not have the most fashionable wardrobe. He says that the fact that his outfits were so free of fashion robbed him actually of quite a few dates. Bill also admits that this may have been due to the fact that he was sporting a mustache at the time and overall, it didn’t really suit him all that well. So that may have been part of it.

Bill has also worked as part of ESPN as well as the ESPN.com website for three years, 1999 to 2002. while he was there, he wrote a column about how the world of sports was still very tough to navigate for gay people. The essay made him even more well known and he was given a 2002 GLAAD Media Award in recognition of the piece. He has also worked doing sports writing and editing for the AP in New York.

His first book ever published that made him an author in print came out in 2008 and is titled Out of the Pocket. The story is about a quarterback that goes to a high school in California. He’s nervous to come out as gay but knows that he’s different from his peers and clashing with the macho culture. Can he be who he truly is and still be considered one of the guys? Read this book to find out.

Out of the Pocket was originally titled Audibles. The novel was written while he was attending graduate school and going to Arizona State. He sold the novel in 2007 but his editor requested that he change the name of the book so that it would have a more broad appeal (as no one really got much from the original title). The move paid off, the book did well, and in 2009 the novel received the Lambda Literary Award.

Bill is the author of the youth fictional novel Openly Straight. It is the first of a series by the same name and came out in 2013. The sequel to this dynamic fictional novel came out a few years later and is titled Honestly Ben. The series has been extremely well-received and affords readers of various sexuality identification to have characters that resemble them more than a heterosexual norm. It won the Sid Fleischman Award.

Openly Straight is Bill Konigsberg’s first book in a series. The novel takes place in an all-male boarding school in Massachusetts, in the picturesque natural beauty of New England. The main character in this story is Rafe. He is from Colorado and is just like any other teenager.

Rafe has a pretty normal life but it is unusual in the aspect that he has been ‘out’ about his sexuality ever since he was in eighth grade. The teenager is used to living in a culture where he’s accepted– both by his family, which means his parents, and his classmates. Rafe is lucky because all of his peers and everyone in his life in Colorado accept him for who he is.

Rafe just wants to be normal even though he is gay. He wants his sexuality to be integrated as just one part of who he is instead of it being the main, defining thing about him that everyone knows. It’s just not fun when everyone sees you being gay as the main headline of who you are. Rafe decides to transfer to a boarding school for boys in New England– and this time it’s his chance to play down his sexuality instead of it having be the one thing about him that everyone focuses on.

It feels kind of like starting over. Rafe doesn’t want to be in the closet to hide, just to try and be accepted more for who he is instead of what people perceive to be his defining traits. That all starts to change when he sees a class mate named Ben Carver having a really rough time and starting to break down. Rafe starts to form a friendship with Ben.

Ben hasn’t had the same benefits that he has and on some level has no idea that love between men is possible. Rafe has to accept that he may have to table his experiment in order to be there for someone that really needs some support. Read this amazing novel by Bill Konigsberg to find out what happens.

Honestly Ben is the second novel and a companion book to Openly Straight by author Bill Konigsberg. Ben is back and life is back to the way it used to be. He’s going to Natick School and doing okay in his classes, and even got made captain for baseball. He won a scholarship to go to college and is putting that business with Rafe behind him.

Ben doesn’t know what to do. He’s got a crush on a girl, school’s getting tougher, and Rafe is dating someone else– and Ben’s realizing that he may have more feelings for Rafe than he thought. What will Ben decide to do? You’ve got to read Honestly Ben to find out!