Lambda Literary, the nation's premiere LGBTQ literary arts organization, proudly announced the 36th annual Lambda Literary Award winners on June 11 at a celebration at Sony Hall. Awards in numerous categories were given, including several Bay Area authors. The event was also streamed live and recorded on YouTube (see link below). Here are the winners and finalists.
Lesbian Fiction
•WINNER: Biography of X // Catherine Lacey (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
•Big Swiss // Jen Beagin (Scribner)
•Organ Meats // K-Ming Chang (One World)
•Our Hideous Progeny // C E McGill (HarperCollins Publishers)
•Pomegranate // Helen Elaine Lee (Atria Books)
Gay Fiction
•WINNER: Family Meal // Bryan Washington (Penguin Random House / Riverhead Books)
•American Scholar // Patrick E. Horrigan (Lethe Press)
•Blackouts // Justin Torres (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
•Brother & Sister Enter the Forest: A Novel // Richard Mirabella (Catapult)
•I Will Greet the Sun Again // Khashayar J. Khabushani (Hogarth Books)
Bisexual Fiction
•WINNER: Natural Beauty // Ling Ling Huang (Penguin Random House / Dutton)
•All-Night Pharmacy: A Novel // Ruth Madievsky (Catapult)
•Endpapers // Jennifer Savran Kelly (Algonquin Books)
•Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen // Sarah James (Sourcebooks)
•Old Enough // Haley Jakobson (Penguin Random House / Dutton)
Transgender Fiction
•WINNER: Wild Geese // Soula Emmanuel (Feminist Press)
•Bellies //Nicola Dinan (Hanover Square Press)
•Girlfriends // Emily Zhou (LittlePuss Press)
•The Rage Letters // Valérie Bah; translator Kama La Mackerel (Metonymy Press)
•Trash // Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny (Deep Vellum)
Bisexual Nonfiction
•WINNER: Creep: Accusations and Confessions // Myriam Gurba (Avid Reader Press)
•Bisexual Men Exist: A Handbook for Bisexual, Pansexual and M-Spec Men // Vaneet Mehta (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
•Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto // Zachary Zane (Abrams Image)
•Crying Wolf // Eden Boudreau (Book*hug Press)
•Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir // Kawika Guillermo (Duke University Press)
Transgender Nonfiction
•WINNER: Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary // Miss Major and Toshio Meronek (Verso)
•Love and Money, Sex and Death // McKenzie Wark (Verso Books)
•On Community // Casey Plett (Biblioasis)
•Tar Hollow Trans: Essays // Stacy Jane Grover (University Press of Kentucky)
•Transland: Consent, Kink, and Pleasure // Mx. Sly (Arsenal Pulp Press)
LGBTQ+ Nonfiction
•WINNER: Hi Honey, I'm Homo // Matt Baume (BenBella Books)
•Black on Black: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America // Daniel Black (Harlequin Trade Publishing / Hanover Square Press)
•Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City // Elyssa Maxx Goodman (Harlequin Trade Publishing / Hanover Square Press)
•Otherwise// Julie Marie Wade (Autumn House Press)
•Out: A Parent's Guide to Supporting Your LGBTQIA+ Kid Through Coming Out and Beyond // John Sovec, LMFT (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
Lesbian Poetry
•WINNER: Teeter // Kimberly Alidio (Nightboat Books)
•Ardor // Alyse Knorr (Gasher Press)
•Because You Were Mine // Brionne Janae (Haymarket Books)
•Couplets // Maggie Millner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
•Dream of Xibalba //Stephanie Adams-Santos (Orison Books)
Gay Poetry
•WINNER: Trace Evidence // Charif Shanahan (Tin House)
•Hard Drive // Paul Stephenson (Carcanet Press)
•Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems // Richard Blanco (Beacon Press)
•Love(ly) Child // Emanuel Xavier (Rebel Satori Press)
•What We Lost in the Swamp // Grant Chemidlin (Central Avenue Poetry)
Bisexual Poetry
•WINNER: Desire Museum // Danielle Cadena Deulen (BOA Editions)
•A Film in Which I Play Everyone // Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf Press)
•Ephemera // Sierra DeMulder (Button Poetry)
•Good Grief, the Ground // Margaret Ray (BOA Editions)
•Impersonal Rainbow & The Bisexual Purge // Paul Killebrew (Canarium Books)
Transgender Poetry
•WINNER: Hood Vacations // Michal 'MJ' Jones (Black Lawrence Press)
•Portraits as Animal: Poems // Victoriano Cárdenas (Bloomsday Literary)
•Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco //K. Iver (Milkweed Editions)
•Taking to Water // Jennifer Conlon (Autumn House Press)
•Transitory // Subhaga Crystal Bacon (BOA Editions)
LGBTQ+ Poetry
•WINNER: The Perfect Bastard // Quinn Carver Johnson (Northwestern University Press)
•Lanternfly August // Robin Gow (Driftwood Press)
•motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life // Destiny Hemphill (Action Books)
•Pig // Sam Sax (Scribner)
•Toska // Alina Pleskova (Deep Vellum)
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
•WINNER: Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives // Amelia Possanza (Catapult)
•Hijab Butch Blues // Lamya H (The Dial Press)
•Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche // Vi Khi Nao (11:11 Press)
•To Name the Bigger Lie // Sarah Viren (Scribner)
•Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters // Lynnée Denise (The University of Texas Press)
Gay Memoir/Biography
•WINNER: Tweakerworld // Jason Yamas (Unnamed Press)
•Leading Lady // Charles Busch (BenBella Books)
•Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It // Greg Marshall (Abrams Press)
•Mother, Nature // Jedidiah Jenkins (Convergent Books)
•Reaching Ninety // Martin Duberman (Chicago Review Press )
Lesbian Romance
•WINNER: Dance with Me // Georgia Beers (Bold Strokes Books)
•A Lady to Treasure // Marianne Ratcliffe (Bellows Press)
•Catch // Kris Bryant (Bold Strokes Books)
•Love at 350° // Lisa Peers (The Dial Press)
•Lucky in Lace // Melissa Brayden (Bold Strokes Books)
Gay Romance
•WINNER: We Could Be So Good // Cat Sebastian (Avon Books)
•Dionysus in Wisconsin // E. H. Lupton (Winnowing Fan Press)
•Mistletoe & Mishigas // M.A. Wardell (Self-published)
•The Art of Husbandry // Jay Hogan (Southern Lights Publishing / Self-published)
•The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen // KJ Charles (Sourcebooks)
LGBTQ+ Anthology
•WINNER: 2 Trans 2 Furious: An extremely serious journal of Transgender Street Racing Studies // Tuck Woodstock & Niko Stratis (Rapid Onset Gender Distro / Self-published)
•A Pill for Promiscuity: Gay Sex in an Age of Pharmaceuticals // Andrew R. Spieldenner and Jeffrey Escoffier (Rutgers University Press)
•Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection // Madeline Dyer, Editor (Page Street Publishing / Page Street YA)
•Fairy Tale Review: The Rainbow Issue // Benjamin Schaefer (Wayne State University Press)
•Rosalind's Siblings: Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Scientists of Marginalized Genders// Bogi Takács, Editor (Atthis Arts)
LGBTQ+ Children's Books
•WINNER: The Apartment House on Poppy Hill // Nina LaCour; illustrator Sonia Albert (Chronicle Books)
•Door by Door // Meeg Pincus and Meridth Mckean Gimbel (Crown Books for Young Readers)
•Gender Identity for Kids // Andy Passchier (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
•Grandad's Pride // Harry Woodgate (Little Bee Books)
•The Wishing Flower // A. J. Irving and Kip Alizadeh (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
LGBTQ Comics
•WINNER: A Guest in The House // Emily Caroll (First Second)
•Belle of the Ball // Mari Costa (First Second)
•Blackward // Lawrence Lindell (Drawn & Quarterly)
•Roaming // Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly)
•The Chromatic Fantasy // H.A. (Silver Sprocket)
LGBTQ+ Drama
•WINNER: Fat Ham // James Ijames (Theatre Communications Group)
•For Both Resting and Breeding // Adam Meisner (Scirocco Drama / J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing)
•I Wanna Fuck Like Romeo and Juliet // Andrew Rincón (Samuel French, a Concord Theatricals Company)
•Joan of Arkansas // Milo Wippermann (Ugly Duckling Presse)
•the bandaged place // Harrison David Rivers (Samuel French, a Concord Theatricals Company)
LGBTQ+ Middle Grade
•WINNER: Dear Mothman // Robin Gow (Amulet Books)
•Ellie Engle Saves Herself // Leah Johnson (Disney Hyperion)
•Just Lizzie // Karen Wilfrid (HarperCollins / Clarion Books)
•Matteo // Michael Leali (HarperCollins)
•The Beautiful Something Else // Alden Van Otterloo (Scholastic Press)
LGBTQ+ Mystery
•WINNER: A Calculated Risk // Cari Hunter (Bold Strokes Books)
•Don't Forget the Girl // Rebecca McKanna (Sourcebooks Landmark)
•The Good Ones // Polly Stewart (HarperCollins Publishers)
•Transitory // J. M. Redmann (Bold Strokes Books)
•Where the Dead Sleep // Joshua Moehling (Poisoned Pen Press)
LGBTQ+ Romance and Erotica
•WINNER: A Tight Squeeze: Smutty Trans and Queer Stories // laura q (Microcosm Publishing)
•Chef's Choice // TJ Alexander (Emily Bestler Books / Atria Books)
•Fly with Me: A Novel //Andie Burke (St. Martin's Griffin)
•Iris Kelly Doesn't Date // Ashley Herring Blake (Berkley)
•The Fiancee Farce // Alexandria Bellefleur (Avon Books)
LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction
•WINNER: I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself: A Novel // Marisa Crane (Catapult)
•Bang Bang Bodhisattva// Aubrey Wood (Solaris)
•The Archive Undying // Emma Mieko Candon (Tordotcom Publishing)
•The Saint of Bright Doors // Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom Publishing)
•The Thick and the Lean // Chana Porter (Saga Press)
LGBTQ+ Studies
•WINNER: The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti // Erin L. Durban (University of Illinois Press)
•Ambivalent Affinities: A Political History of Blackness and Homosexuality after World War II // Jennifer Dominique Jones (University of North Carolina Press)
•Care without Pathology: How Trans- Health Activists Are Changing Medicine // Christoph Hanssmann (University of Minnesota Press)
•Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America // Margot Canaday (Princeton University Press)
•Sexuality and the Rise of China: The Post-1990s Gay Generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China // Travis S. K. Kong (Duke University Press)
LGBTQ+ Young Adult
•WINNER: Only This Beautiful Moment // Abdi Nazemian (HarperCollins / Balzer + Bray)
•Cold Girls // Maxine Rae (Flux)
•Pritty// Keith F. Miller, Jr. (HarperCollins / HarperTeen)
•That Self-Same Metal (The Forge & Fracture Saga, Book 1) // Brittany N. Williams (Amulet Books)
•The Wicked Bargain // Gabe Cole Novoa (Random House Books for Young Readers)
The seven special prizes at this year's ceremony included two new awards, The Denneny Award for Editorial Excellence, named in honor of Michael Denneny, who founded the first ever LGBTQ+ imprint at a major publishing house, and The Pat Holt Prize for Critical Arts Writing, in memory of the celebrated author and long-time SF Chronicle book review editor Patricia Holt. Another new prize was announced at the ceremony: the Publishing Professional Award sponsored by Spotify.
Randall Kenan Prize for Black LGBTQ Fiction: Liv Little
Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction: Stephanie Davies
Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers: Federico Erebia & River 瑩瑩 Dandelion
Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize: K.M. Soehnlein & Dr. Zelda Lockhart
The J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50: Paul Festa
The Denneny Award for Editorial Excellence: Dr. Remi Recchia
The Pat Holt Prize for Critical Arts Writing: Elizabeth Hoover
www.lambdaliterary.org
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!