Lambda Literary Award

The Lambda Literary Award Medal Design 2008.

Lambda Literary Awards (also known as the "Lammys") are awarded yearly by the US-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."^[1] The awards were instituted in 1988.

The program has grown from 14 awards in early years to 22 awards today.^[2] Early categories such as HIV/AIDS Literature were dropped as the prominence of the AIDS crisis within the gay community waned,^[2] while categories for bisexual and transgender literature were added as the community became more inclusive.^[2] In both the bisexual and transgender categories, one or two awards may be presented annually; if the number of submissions in a given year warrants, then separate awards for fiction and non-fiction are presented, while a smaller number of submissions results in a single award.

In addition to the primary literary awards, the Lambda Literary Foundation also presents a number of special awards. The Pioneer Award is presented as a lifetime achievement award to a distinguished figure in the history of LGBT literature; the Bridge Builder Award is presented to a person, regardless of sexuality, who has been a prominent ally and advocate of the LGBT community; and the Trustee Award is presented to a writer who has made a considerable contribution to a wider awareness and understanding of the lives of LGBT people.

Beginning in 2011, the Lambda Literary Awards also took over the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize, formerly presented by the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. The award, endowed by academic and writer James Duggins, is presented annually to two LGBT writers, one male and one female, to honor their body of work. In 2013, the foundation instituted the Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, to honor young writers who have published at least one book.

Controversy

Bisexual Community/Bi Any Other Name

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^[3] by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu was forced to compete (and lose) in the category "Lesbian Anthology".^[4] Additionally in 2005, Directed by Desire: Collected Poems^[5] a posthumous collection of the bisexual Jamaican American writer June Jordan's work had to compete (and win) in the category "Lesbian Poetry".^[6]

Led by BiNet USA,^[7] the American Institute of Bisexuality and assisted by other bisexual organizations including BiPOL, Bialogue a group of bisexual rights activists launched a multi-year struggle that eventually culminated in 2006 with the addition of a Bisexual category.

Transgender Community/The Man Who Would Be Queen

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]

Winners and nominees

By year

The Lambda Literary Awards are presented each year to honour 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).

See also

• Stonewall Book Award

References

External links

• Lambda Literary Awards website

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