Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography | |
---|---|
Awarded for | Literary award |
Sponsored by | Lambda Literary Foundation |
Date | Annual |
Website | lambdaliterary |
The Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about gay men. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not. [1]
Between 1994 and 2000, the award was given for gay biography/autobiography. [2] From 2002–2006 there was no gay biography/autobiography category (and also no lesbian biography/autobiography category) but rather separate categories for biography and for autobiography/memoir. In 2007 the gay memoir/autobiography category was created (as was the lesbian memoir/autobiography category). [2]
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1994 | Edmund White | Genet | Winner | [3] |
Brad Gooch | City Poet:The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara | Finalist | [3] | |
Lars Eighner | Travels With Lizbeth | |||
Reinaldo Arenas | Before Night Falls | |||
James Broughton | Coming Unbuttoned | |||
1995 | Abraham Verghese | My Own Country | Winner | [4] |
Ned Rorem | Knowing When to Stop | Finalist | [4] | |
Lawrence Mass | Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite | |||
Paul Monette | Last Watch of the Night | |||
John Preston | My Life as a Pornographer | |||
1996 | Lyle Leverich | Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams | Winner | [5] |
Bill T. Jones with Peggy Gillespie | Last Night on Earth | Finalist | [5] | |
Gore Vidal | Palimpsest | |||
Edmund White | Our Paris | |||
Leroy Aarons | Prayers for Bobby | |||
1997 | Fenton Johnson | Geography of the Heart | Winner | [6] |
David Hajdu | Lush Life | Finalist | [6] | |
Assotto Saint | Spells of a Voodoo Doll | |||
Bernard Cooper | Truth Serum | |||
Mark Doty | Heaven’s Coast | |||
1998 | Rafael Campo | The Poetry of Healing | Winner | [7] |
Gary Schmidgall | Walt Whitman: a Gay Life | Finalist | [7] | |
Felice Picano | A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay | |||
Michael Klein | Track Conditions | |||
Mark Thompson | Gay Body: a Journey Through Shadow to Self | |||
1999 | William J. Mann | Wisecracker | Winner | [8] |
Gavin Geoffrey Dillard | In The Flesh | Finalist | [8] | |
Norman Page | Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years | |||
Andrew Tobias | The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up | |||
Graham Caveney | Gentleman Junkie: The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs | |||
2000 | Jesse Green | The Velveteen Father | Winner | [9] |
Gad Beck | An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin | Finalist | [9] | |
Mark Doty | Firebird: A Memoir | |||
Fred Kaplan | Gore Vidal | |||
Martin Duberman | Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion | |||
2001 | Douglas Murray | Bosie | Winner | [10] |
Jean-Yves Tadie | Marcel Proust | Finalist | [10] | |
David Mixner | Brave Journeys | |||
Jay Quinn | The Mentor | |||
Ned Rorem | Lies | |||
2007 | Bernard Cooper | The Bill From My Father | Winner | [11] |
Alan Bennett | Untold Stories | Finalist | [11] | |
Jonathan Silin | My Father’s Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents | |||
Kim Powers | History of Swimming | |||
Patrick Moore | Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir | |||
2008 | Kevin Sessums | Mississippi Sissy | Winner | [12] [13] |
Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz | What Becomes You | Finalist | [13] | |
Kenny Fries | The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory | |||
Mark Doty | Dog Years | |||
Martin Duberman | The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein | |||
Thom Bierdz | Forgiving Troy | |||
2009 | Sheila Rowbotham | Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love | Winner | [14] |
Aaron Cooper | Bringing Him Home | Finalist | [14] | |
Aaron Shurin | King of Shadows | |||
Bob Morris | Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad | |||
Joel Derfner | Swish | |||
2010 | Reynolds Price | Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back | Winner | [15] |
David Plante | The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief | Finalist | [15] | |
Douglas A. Martin | Once You Go Back | |||
Edmund White | City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960’s and 70’s | |||
Jon Ginoli | Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division | |||
2011 | Justin Spring | Secret Historian | Winner | [16] |
Bryan Batt | She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother | Finalist | [17] | |
Gale Chester Whittington | Beyond Normal: The Birth of Gay Pride | |||
R. Tripp Evans | Grant Wood: A Life | |||
Selina Hastings | The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham | |||
2012 | Glen Retief | The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood | Winner | [18] |
Charles Silverstein | For the Ferryman: A Personal History | Finalist | ||
Michael Schiavi | Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo | |||
Ryan Van Meter | If You Knew Then What I Know Now | |||
William E. Jones | Halsted Plays Himself | |||
2013 | Cynthia Carr | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Winner | [19] |
Charles Rowan Beye | My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man’s Odyssey | Finalist | [19] | |
Kamal Al-Solaylee | Intolerable | |||
Mutsuo Takahashi with Jeffrey Angles (trans.) | Twelve Views from the Distance | |||
Reynolds Price | Midstream: An Unfinished Memoir | |||
Ron Padgett (editor) | The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard | |||
2014 | Jerry Rosco (editor) | A Heaven of Words | Winner | [20] [21] |
Alysia Abbott | Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father | Finalist | [20] | |
Blake Bailey | Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson | |||
David Margolick | Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns | |||
Didier Eribon | Returning to Reims | |||
Hilary Holladay | American Hipster | |||
Jim Elledge | Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist | |||
Perry N. Halkitis | The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience | |||
Richard Rodriguez | Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography | |||
Tim Teeman | In Bed With Gore Vidal | |||
2015 | John Lahr | Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh | Winner (tie) | [22] |
Richard Blanco | The Prince of Los Cocuyos | |||
Alain Mabanckou with Sara Meli Ansari (trans.) | Letter to Jimmy | Finalist | [23] | |
Brent Phillips | Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance | |||
Edmund White | Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris | |||
Philip Gefter | Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe | |||
Rob Smith | Closets, Combat and Coming Out | |||
Sean Strub | Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival | |||
2016 | Langdon Hammer | James Merrill: Life and Art | Winner | [24] |
Arsham Parsi and Marc Colbourne | Exiled for Love: The Journey of an Iranian Queer Activist | Finalist | [25] | |
Bernard Cooper | My Avant-Garde Education: A Memoir | |||
Brad Gooch | Smash Cut | |||
Jameson Currier | Until My Heart Stops | |||
Jean Findlay | Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator | |||
Matthew Spender | A House in St. John’s Wood | |||
Michael V. Smith | My Body Is Yours | |||
2017 | Cleve Jones | When We Rise | Winner | [26] |
Augusten Burroughs | Lust & Wonder | Finalist | [27] | |
Brian Blanchfield | Proxies | |||
Frederic Spotts | Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann | |||
Garrard Conley | Boy Erased: A Memoir | |||
Joseph Osmundson | Capsid: A Love Song | |||
Michael Schreiber | One Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin | |||
Will Schwalbe | Books For Living | |||
2018 | Chiké Frankie Edozien | Lives of Great Men | Winner | [28] [29] |
Alan Bennett | Keeping On Keeping On | Finalist | [30] | |
Bill Goldstein | The World Broke in Two | |||
Casey Gerald | There Will Be No Miracles Here | |||
Jonathan Alexander | Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology | |||
José Antonio Rodríguez | House Built on Ashes | |||
Kenny Fries | In the Province of the Gods | |||
Parvez Sharma | A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance | |||
Victor Corona | Night Class | |||
2019 | Darnell L. Moore | No Ashes in the Fire | Winner | [31] |
Alexander Chee | How to Write an Autobiographical Novel | Finalist | [32] | |
Deray Mckesson | On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope | |||
Edmund White | The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading | |||
Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | |||
Jerry Torre and Tony Maietta | The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens | |||
Lillian Faderman | Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death | |||
2020 | Saeed Jones | How We Fight for Our Lives | Winner | [33] [34] |
Alvin Orloff | DISASTERAMA! Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997 | Finalist | [35] [36] | |
Chris Rush | The Light Years | |||
Guy Hocquenghem with Max Fox (trans.) | The Amphitheater of the Dead | |||
Isaac Mizrahi | I.M. | |||
James Oseland | Jimmy Neurosis | |||
Joseph Caldwell | In the Shadow of the Bridge | |||
Siddharth Dube | An Indefinite Sentence | |||
2021 | Mohsin Zaidi | A Dutiful Boy | Winner | [37] [38] [39] |
Billy-Ray Belcourt | A History of My Brief Body | Finalist | [40] | |
François S. Clemmons | Officer Clemmons: A Memoir | |||
John Birdsall | The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard | |||
R. Eric Thomas | Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America | |||
2022 | Brian Broome | Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir | Winner | [41] [42] |
Rajiv Mohabir | Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir | Finalist | [43] | |
John Paul Brammer | Hola Papi | |||
Peter Staley | Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism | |||
Luis Felipe Fabre with JD Pluecker (trans.) | Writing with Caca / Escribir con Caca | |||
2023 | Edgar Gomez | High-Risk Homosexual | Winner | [44] |
Seán Hewitt | All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir | Finalist | [45] | |
Jim Elledge | An Angel in Sodom | |||
Ron Goldberg | Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York | |||
Jesse Leon | I’m Not Broken | |||
2024 | Charles Busch | Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy | Finalist | [46] |
Greg Marshall | Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It | |||
Jedidiah Jenkins | Mother, Nature | |||
Martin Duberman | Reaching Ninety | |||
Jason Yamas | Tweakerworld |
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