Polari is a form of slang or cant historically used in Britain by some actors, circus and fairground showmen, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals and sex workers, and particularly among the gay subculture. There is some debate about its origins, but it can be traced to at least the 19th century and possibly as early as the 16th century. Polari has a long-standing connection with Punch and Judy street puppeteers, who traditionally used it to converse.
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.
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics.
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City.
Lillian Faderman is an American historian whose books on lesbian history and LGBT history have earned critical praise and awards. The New York Times named three of her books on its "Notable Books of the Year" list. In addition, The Guardian named her book, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History. She was a professor of English at California State University, Fresno, which bestowed her emeritus status, and a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She retired from academe in 2007. Faderman has been referred to as "the mother of lesbian history" for her groundbreaking research and writings on lesbian culture, literature, and history.
Paul Burston is a Welsh journalist and author. He worked for the London gay policing group GALOP and was an activist with ACT UP before moving into journalism. He edited, for some years, the LGBT section of Time Out and founded the Polari Prize.
John R. Gordon is a British writer. His work – novels, plays, screenplays and biography - deals with the intersections of race, sexuality and class. With Rikki Beadle-Blair he founded and runs queer-of-colour-centric indie press Team Angelica. Although he was a "white person from a white suburb", according to Gordon, in the 1980s he became deeply interested in black cultural figures such as James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, and they have influenced his work ever since.
Vivek Shraya is a Canadian musician, writer, and visual artist. She currently lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at the University of Calgary. As a trans femme of colour, Shraya often incorporates her identity in her music, writing, visual art, theatrical work, and films. She is a seven-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, and considered a Great Canadian Filmmaker of the Future by CBC Arts.
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the United States-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works that celebrate or explore LGBT 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."
Matthew Todd is a British writer, editor, and occasional stand-up comedian. He is the author of Straight Jacket - Overcoming Society's Legacy of Gay Shame, a non-fiction title published by Bantam Press in June 2016 and the play Blowing Whistles which has been performed in London, Australia and the United States. He was the editor of the UK gay magazine Attitude between 2008 and 2016 for which he won three British Society of Magazine Editors awards. In June 2016, for his last issue as editor, Prince William sat for the cover of Attitude, the first time a member of the royal family had appeared in a gay magazine.
Diana Souhami is an English writer of biographies, short stories and plays. She is noted for her unconventional biographies of prominent lesbians.
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.
Kamal Al-Solaylee is a Canadian journalist, who published his debut book, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, in 2012. He is currently director of the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at Canada's University of British Columbia.
Diriye Osman is a British-Somali author, visual artist, critic and essayist based in London. He's the author of the Polari Prize-winning collection of stories, Fairytales for Lost Children and the collection of interlinked stories, The Butterfly Jungle.
Kirsty Logan is a Scottish writer.
Saeed Jones is an American writer and poet. His debut collection Prelude to Bruise was named a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. His second book, a memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2019.
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.
The Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, that awards LGBT-themed nonfiction books whose intended audience is "general readers, as opposed to those targeted primarily to scholarly audiences." Anthologies and memoirs are not included as they have their own categories.
