Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by the U.S.-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award. 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." The awards were instituted in 1988.
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at College of Staten Island (CSI) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award.
Eileen Myles is an American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature." In 2012, Myles received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow, which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog's life.
The Lambda Literary Foundation is a LGBT literary organization. The group was incorporated in 1997, but traces its roots to 1987. The foundation aims to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature through programs that encourage development of emerging writers, including the annual Lambda Literary Award, the Writers' Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, their website LambdaLiterary.org, their editorial staff Lambda Literary Review, their weekly e-newsletter Bookish, their annual anthology, their scholarships, and LGBTQ writers in schools program.
Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and was identified with the San Francisco, California literary and arts community for many years. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their views into the queercore community.
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.
Ariel Gore is a journalist, memoirist, novelist, nonfiction author, and teacher. Gore has authored more than ten novels. Gore's fiction and nonfiction work also explores creativity, spirituality, queer culture, and positive psychology. She is the founding editor/publisher of Hip Mama, an Alternative Press Award-winning publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood. Through her work on Hip Mama, Gore is widely credited with launching maternal feminism and the contemporary mothers' movement.
Diane Anderson-Minshall is an award-winning American journalist and author best known for writing about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects. She is editorial director of The Advocate and Chill magazines, the editor-in-chief of HIV Plus magazine, and a contributing editor to OutTraveler. Anderson-Minshall co-authored the 2014 memoir, Queerly Beloved about her relationship with her husband Jacob Anderson-Minshall surviving his gender transition.
Audacia Ray is an American human sexuality and culture author, who focuses on the influences of modern technology. She is a sex worker rights advocate and leads media skills workshops intended to train sex workers to deal with interviews.
Samiya Bashir is an African-American/Somali-American poet and author of three full-length collections of poetry. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She was awarded the 2019 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize by the American Academy of Rome, one of two fellowships awarded for literature.
Melissa Febos is an American writer. She is the author of Whip Smart, a memoir of her work as a professional dominatrix while she was studying at The New School. Her second book, the lyric essay collection Abandon Me, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on February 28, 2017. Her third book and second essay collection, Girlhood, will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2021.
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.
Jeanne Córdova was an American trailblazer of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and proud butch.
The Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1 is a published anthology by The Bronx Council on the Arts and brought forth through a series of workshops meant to empower Bronx residents and shed the stigma on the Bronx's burning past.
The Red Umbrella Project is a New York based non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of sex workers and strives to empower them by giving them a voice.
Maureen Seaton is an American LGBTQ poet, activist, and professor of English at the University of Miami. She is the author of nine solo books of poetry, four co-authored books of poetry, and her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls. Throughout her writing career, Seaton has often collaborated with fellow poets Denise Duhamel, Neil de la Flor, Kristine Snodgrass, and Samuel Ace.
The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) is a San Antonio, Texas-based, non-profit organization dedicated to Latino art and culture. It is the United States' primary arts organization dedicated towards the promotion of Latino art and artists in the United States and Latin America. It supports 900 artists and art-based organizations. Since its founding in 1989, NALAC has provided over 2.3 million dollars in grant money in support of over 185,000 Latino artists and art based organizations throughout the region.
The Bronx Council on the Arts, is an art based culture agency that has grown to become the official cultural agency of the Bronx, New York City. It provides a “lifeline” to more than 4,800 artists and over 250 arts and community-based organizations.
Rahul Mehta is an American author. He was born and raised in West Virginia, and his work focuses on the experience of being queer and South Asian. Mehta is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Gay Fiction and the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction for his short story collection Quarantine (2011). He teaches Creative Writing at the University of the Arts.
