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.
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Lesbian pulp fiction is a genre of lesbian literature that refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel or pulp magazine with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 1960s by many of the same paperback publishing houses as other genres of fiction, including westerns, romances, and detective fiction. Because very little other literature was available for and about lesbians at this time, quite often these books were the only reference the public had for modeling what lesbians were. English professor Stephanie Foote commented on the importance of lesbian pulp novels to the lesbian identity prior to the rise of organized feminism: "Pulps have been understood as signs of a secret history of readers, and they have been valued because they have been read. The more they are read, the more they are valued, and the more they are read, the closer the relationship between the very act of circulation and reading and the construction of a lesbian community becomes…. Characters use the reading of novels as a way to understand that they are not alone."
Joseph Hansen was an American crime writer and poet, best known for a series of novels featuring private eye Dave Brandstetter.
Radclyffe is an American author of lesbian romance, paranormal romance, erotica, and mystery. She has authored multiple short stories, written fan fiction, and edited numerous anthologies. Radclyffe is a member of the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame and has won numerous literary awards, including the RWA/GDRWA Booksellers' Best award, the RWA/Orange County Book Buyers Best award, the RWA/New England Bean Pot award, the RWA/VCRW Laurel Wreath award, the RWA/FTHRW Lories award, the RWA/HODRW Aspen Gold award, the RWA Prism award, the Golden Crown Literary Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. She is a 2003/04 recipient of The Alice B Readers Award for her body of work as well as a member of the Golden Crown Literary Society, Pink Ink, and the Romance Writers of America. In 2014, the Lambda Literary Foundation awarded Barot with the Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist award acknowledging her as an established author with a strong following and the promise of future high-quality work. In 2015 she was a featured author in the award-winning documentary film about the romance writing and reading community, Love Between the Covers, from Blueberry Hill Productions. In 2019 she was named a Trailblazer in Romance by the Romance Writers of America, for her works of LGBTQ+ fiction. In 2021, she was named one of The Advocate's Women of the Year.
Naiad Press (1973–2003) was an American publishing company, one of the first dedicated to lesbian literature. At its closing it was the oldest and largest lesbian/feminist publisher in the world.
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.
Hood is the second novel written by Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue, published in 1995. The book was the recipient of the 1997 Stonewall Book Award and is heavily influenced by James Joyce's Ulysses.
Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher. She is credited for having built the lesbian book industry. After editing The Ladder magazine, published by the lesbian civil rights group Daughters of Bilitis, she co-founded a lesbian book-publishing company Naiad Press, which achieved publicity and became the world's largest publisher of lesbian books. She built a major collection of lesbian literature, catalogued with detailed indexing of topics.
Mary Wings is an active American cartoonist, writer, and artist. She is known for highlighting lesbian themes in her work. In 1973, she made history by releasing Come Out Comix, the first lesbian comic book. She is also known for her series of detective novels featuring lesbian heroine Emma Victor. Divine Victim, Wings' only Gothic novel, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Mystery in 1994.
Lori L. Lake is an American writer of fiction, mainly about lesbian protagonists. She is also an editor, writing instructor, and former publisher.
The Alice B Readers Award is given annually to living writers of lesbian fiction whose careers are distinguished by consistently well-written stories about lesbians. Named for Alice B. Toklas, the award is given once, only, in appreciation of career achievement. In addition to the medal, each recipient is given a lapel pin and a significant honorarium.
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.
Lee Lynch is an American author writing primarily on lesbian themes, specifically noted for authentic characterizing of butch and femme characters in fiction. She is the recipient of a Golden Crown Literary Society Trail Blazer award for lifetime achievement, as well as being the namesake for the Golden Crown Literary Society's Lee Lynch Classics Award.
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Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) is an American nonprofit organization established in 2004 for those with an interest in Sapphic literature. Since 2005, GCLS has at its annual conference presented Golden Crown Literary Awards (Goldies) to authors and editors in various categories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and anthologies/collections, as well as for cover design and audiobook narration.
Sarah Dreher was an American lesbian novelist and playwright, and best known for her award-winning lesbian mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Stoner McTavish.
Penny Mickelbury is an African-American playwright, short story writer, mystery series writer, and historical novelist who worked as a print and television journalist for ten years before concentrating on fiction writing. After leaving journalism, she taught fiction and script writing in Los Angeles and saw two of her plays produced there. She began writing detective novels with Keeping Secrets, published by Naiad Press in 1994, in the first of a series featuring Gianna Maglione, a lesbian chief of a hate-crimes unit based in Washington, D.C., and her lover 'Mimi Patterson', a journalist. Her second series of four books features Carole Ann Gibson, a Washington, D.C., attorney, who is widowed in the first book and subsequently runs an investigation agency with Jake Graham, the detective who investigated her husband's death. Her third series features Phil Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican private investigator on the Lower Easter Side of New York City. Mickelbury has also written short story collections and historical novels highlighting the Black experience in America.
Sarah Keate is a fictional character, the protagonist in a series of medical mystery novels by American author Mignon G. Eberhart.
