Lambda Literary Award | |
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Location | New York City, United States |
Presented by | Lambda Literary |
First awarded | 1989 |
Website | www |
Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ+ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ+ literature. The awards were instituted in 1989.
The program has grown from 14 awards in early years to 24 awards today. Early categories such as HIV/AIDS literature were dropped as the prominence of the AIDS crisis within the gay community waned, [1] and categories for bisexual and transgender literature were added as the community became more inclusive. [1]
In addition to the primary literary awards, Lambda Literary also presents a number of special awards.
1 In both the bisexual and transgender categories, presentation may vary according to the number of eligible titles submitted in any given year. If the number of titles warrants, then separate awards are presented in either two (Fiction and Nonfiction, with the Fiction category inclusive of poetry titles) or three (Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry) categories, while if a smaller number of titles is deemed eligible, then a merged Literature shortlist is put forward. However, even when the category shortlists have been merged, judges still retain the right to identify a single winner in the unlisted category; for example, at the 25th Lambda Literary Awards in 2013 the judges named both fiction and non-fiction winners in the Bisexual Literature category, and at the 29th Lambda Literary Awards in 2017 the judges picked a title from the Bisexual Fiction shortlist as the winner in Bisexual Poetry despite the lack of an advance poetry shortlist.
Ellen Hart has won five awards in the Lesbian Mystery category, the most by any single author, and is one of only three writers to have won the award more than once (with three-time winners Katherine V. Forrest and J. M. Redmann). Similarly, Michael Nava has won five awards in the Gay Mystery category, the most by any single author, and is one of only four writers to have won the award more than once (with three-time winner John Morgan Wilson, two-time winner R. D. Zimmerman, and two-time winner Marshall Thornton). Marshall Thornton is the only author in the gay mystery category to have won twice for two different series.
Alison Bechdel has won four awards in the Humor category, the most by any single author, and is one of five writers to have won the award more than once (with Joe Keenan, Michael Thomas Ford, David Sedaris, and David Rakoff). The Humor category has been discontinued.
Nicola Griffith and Melissa Scott have each won four awards in the Scifi/Fantasy/Horror category, and are two of six writers to have won the SFFH award more than once (with Stephen Pagel, Jim Grimsley, and Lee Thomas).
Sarah Waters has won three awards in the Lesbian Fiction category, for Tipping the Velvet (2000), Fingersmith (2002), and The Night Watch in (2007), and is one of only three writers to have won the Lesbian Fiction award more than once (with two-time winners Dorothy Allison and Achy Obejas).
Mark Doty and Adrienne Rich have each won three awards in the Poetry category, and are two of seven poets to have won the award more than once (with two-time winners Joan Larkin, Michael Klein, Marilyn Hacker, Audre Lorde, and J. D. McClatchy)
Richard Labonté, Radclyffe, and Tristan Taormino have each won two awards in the Erotica category, each winning once before the category was split into Gay and Lesbian subdivisions, and each winning their second after the category was split.
Karin Kallmaker and Michael Thomas Ford have each won two awards in the Romance category, each winning one before the category was split into Gay and Lesbian subdivisions – Kallmaker with Maybe Next Time and Ford with Last Summer, but in 2004 – and each winning their second after the category was split – Ford with Changing Tides in 2008 and Kallmaer with The Kiss That Counted in 2009.
Colm Tóibín is the only writer to have won two awards in the Gay Fiction category for The Master in 2004 and for The Empty Family in 2011.
Paul Monette is the only writer to have won two awards in the Gay Non-Fiction category, for Borrowed Time in 1989 and for Becoming a Man in 1993.
Lillian Faderman is the only writer to have won awards in seven different categories, having received:
Several writers have won awards in more than one category in the same year for the same work (note that according to current guidelines a book may only be entered in one category):
Several writers have won awards in more than one category in the same year for different works:
Several other writers have won awards in more than one category in different years and for different works:
Several authors have won awards in three different categories:
Numerous Lambda Award-winning works have been adapted for film and television:
The Lambda Literary Awards are presented each year to honor works of literature published in the previous year; accordingly, the first awards ceremony may be described in different sources as either the 1989 awards (for the year of presentation) or the 1988 awards (for the year in which the nominated works were published).
In 1992, despite requests from the bisexual community for a more appropriate and inclusive category, the groundbreaking bisexual anthology Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out [2] by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaʻahumanu was forced to compete, and lost, in the category "Lesbian Anthology". [3] Additionally, in 2005, Directed by Desire: Collected Poems, [4] a posthumous collection of the bisexual Jamaican-American writer June Jordan's work, competed (and won) in the category "Lesbian Poetry". [5]
Led by BiNet USA, [6] and assisted by other bisexual organizations including the American Institute of Bisexuality, BiPOL, and Bialogue, the bisexual community launched a multi-year struggle that eventually culminated in 2006 with the addition of a Bisexual category. [7]
In 2004, the book The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism by the highly controversial researcher J. Michael Bailey was announced as a finalist in the Transgender category of the 2003 Awards.
Transgender people immediately protested the nomination and gathered thousands of petition signatures in opposition within a few days. After the petition, the Foundation's judges examined the book more closely, decided that they considered it transphobic and removed it from their list of finalists. [8] Within a year the executive director who had initially approved of the book's inclusion resigned. [9] Executive director Charles Flowers later stated that "the Bailey incident revealed flaws in our awards nomination process, which I have completely overhauled since becoming the foundation’s executive director in January 2006." [10]
Alyson Books, formerly known as Alyson Publications, was a book publishing house which specialized in LGBT fiction and non-fiction. Former publisher Don Weise described it as "the world's oldest and largest publisher of LGBT literature" and "the home of award-winning books in the areas of memoir, history, humor, commercial fiction, mystery, and erotica, among many others".
Cleis Press is an American independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It later moved to San Francisco and was based out of Berkeley until its purchase by Start Media in 2014. Its founders were Frédérique Delacoste, Felice Newman and Mary Winfrey Trautmann, who collectively financed, wrote and published the press's first book Fight Back: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in 1981. In 1987, they published Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry by Delacoste with Priscilla Alexander.
Sheela Lambert (1956-2024), a native and lifelong resident of New York City, was an American bisexual activist and writer.
Bella Books is a small press publisher of lesbian literature based in Tallahassee, Florida.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics. A similar term is sapphic literature, encompassing works that feature love between women that are not necessarily lesbian.
Joan Larkin is an American poet, playwright, and writing teacher. She was active in the small press lesbian feminist publishing explosion of the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. The science fiction writer Donald Moffitt was her brother.
Joan Nestle is a Lambda Award winning writer and editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which holds, among other things, everything she has ever written. She is openly lesbian and sees her work of archiving history as critical to her identity as "a woman, as a lesbian, and as a Jew."
Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, published by Riverdale Avenue Books, is an anthology edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaʻahumanu, and is one of the seminal books in the history of the modern bisexual rights movement. It holds a place that is in many ways comparable to that held by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in the feminist movement.
Karin Kallmaker is an American author of lesbian fiction whose works also include those originally written under the name Laura Adams. Her writings span lesbian romance, lesbian erotica, and lesbian science-fiction/fantasy. Dubbed the Queen of Lesbian Romance, she publishes exclusively in the lesbian market as a matter of personal choice.
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the United States-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works that celebrate or explore LGBTQ themes. The awards are presented annually for books published in the previous year. The Lambda Literary Foundation states that its mission is "to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians—the whole literary community."
Amber Dawn is a Canadian writer, who won the 2012 Dayne Ogilvie Prize, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer.
Richard Labonté was a Canadian writer and editor, best known as the editor or co-editor of numerous anthologies of LGBT literature.
Lethe Press is an American book publishing company based in Western Massachusetts. Launched in 2001 by Steve Berman, a writer and a former employee of Giovanni's Room Bookstore in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the company was originally launched to publish speculative fiction, primarily LGBT-themed, as well as rereleasing out of print titles from other LGBT publishers. In recent years, with numerous LGBT-oriented publishing companies folding, the company has also expanded its line to include new LGBT-themed non-fiction, poetry, and anthology titles.
Assotto Saint was a Haitian-born American poet, publisher and performance artist, who was a key figure in LGBT and African-American art and literary culture of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Becky Birtha is an American poet and children's author who lives in the greater Philadelphia area. She is best known for her poetry and short stories depicting African-American and lesbian relationships, often focusing on topics such as interracial relationships, emotional recovery from a breakup, single parenthood and adoption. Her poetry was featured in the acclaimed 1983 anthology of African-American feminist writing Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith and published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She has won a Lambda Literary award for her poetry. She has been awarded grants from the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to further her literary works. In recent years she has written three children's historical fiction picture books about the African-American experience.
Riverdale Avenue Books, located in Riverdale, Bronx, New York, is a publisher of e-books, print books on demand and audiobooks founded in 2012 by Lori Perkins. Riverdale is a member of the American Association of Publishers and publishes between 50 and 75 books a year.
Caro Soles is a Canadian author of science fiction, mystery and erotica literature, who has published work both in her own name and under the pen name Kyle Stone.
The Bisexual Book Awards are an annual literary award program, presented by the Bi Writers Association to honour the year's best works of literature addressing themes of bisexuality. The awards were presented for the first time in 2013.
Stuart Timmons was an American journalist, activist, historian, and award-winning author specializing in LGBT history based in Los Angeles, California. He was the author of The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement and the co-author of Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians with Lillian Faderman.
Bisexual literature is a subgenre of LGBT literature that includes literary works and authors that address the topic of bisexuality or biromanticism. This includes characters, plot lines, and/or themes portraying bisexual behavior in both men and women.