Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature
| Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Transgender Literature |
| Sponsored by | Lambda Literary Foundation |
| Date | Annual |
The Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, that awards books with transgender content. Awards are granted based on literary merit and transgender content, and therefore, the writer may be cisgender. The award can be separated into three categories: transgender fiction, transgender nonfiction, and transgender poetry, though early iterations of the award included categories for bisexual/transgender literature, transgender/genderqueer literature, and transgender literature.
Criteria
Transgender fiction
The award for transgender fiction recognizes "[n]ovels, novellas, short story collections, and anthologies with prominent ... trans characters and/or content of strong significance to the ... trans communities." The list "[m]ay include historical novels, comics, cross-genre works of fiction, humor, and other styles of fiction."
Transgender nonfiction
The award for transgender nonfiction recognizes "[n]onfiction works with content of strong significance to members of the ... trans communities," including "a wide range of subjects for the general or academic reader."
Transgender poetry
The award for transgender poetry recognizes individual volumes of poems and poem collections with transgender content. Chapbooks are ineligible for the prize, as well as "[u]pdated editions of previously published works ... unless at least 50% of the poetry (not the supplemental text) is new."
History
Though the Lambda Literary Foundation has been giving out awards since 1989, a category honoring works with transgender content was not added until 1997. In the history of the awards, the categories for transgender and bisexual literature have remained contentious. Between 1997 and 2009, nonfiction, fiction, and poetry with transgender content was combined into a single category, transgender literature, aside from 2001, in which the bisexual and transgender literature was counted as one category.
Controversy
Bailey's The Man Who Would Be Queen
On February 2, 2004, the Lambda Literary Foundation added The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey to their list of finalists or a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature but removed the book on March 12, 2004 after people protested and petitioned for the removal due to transphobic content. Executive Director Jim Marks had approved the book and defended its inclusion in the awards. He resigned the following year after serving the Foundation since 1996, and the Foundation closed their website, eliminating any evidence of the controversy.
Critics noted that two major issues with the committee that led to such an issue. First, books are nominated by publishers, then made finalists by booksellers, making the award more about potential sales than literary merit. Second, the committee held no members of the transgender community, "which explains how they were unaware that the vast majority of the community found the book defamatory and irresponsible."
The Foundation launched a new website in 2006 under the guidance of Executive Director Charles Flowers, who also worked to improve the award process. While books would still be nominated by publishers and booksellers, the Foundation would have their own committee of judges, which would include at least one transgender individual.
Despite recovery efforts, many outlets have continued to use the fact that the Foundation nominated The Man Who Would Be Queen for an award as a way to validate the book's message.
Dreger's Galileo's Middle Finger
In 2016, the Lambda Literary Foundation nominated Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, even though the author "endorse[d] and actively promote[d] the theories in Bailey's book," The Man Who Would Be Queen. "[A] half-dozen national LGBT organizations" urged the Foundation to remove Galileo's Middle Finger from their list of nominees for the award, a request the Foundation later granted, stating, "“The nomination process did not include full vetting of all works to be certain that each work is consistent with the mission of affirming LGBTQ lives.”
Recipients
| Year | Category | Author | Work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Literature | Loren Cameron | Body Alchemy |
Winner |
|
| Phyllis Burke | Gender Shock |
Finalist |
|||
| Leon E. Pettiway | Honey, Honey Miss Thang | ||||
| Catalina de Erauso | Lieutenant Nun | ||||
| Leslie Feinberg | Warriors | ||||
| 1998 | Literature | Dylan Scholinski and Jane Meredith Adams | The Last Time I Wore a Dress | Winner | |
| Annick Prieur | Mema's House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos | Finalist | |||
| Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel (editors) | PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality | ||||
| Riki Wilchins | Read My Lips: Sexual Subversions and the End of Gender | ||||
| Pat Califia | Sex Changes | ||||
| 1999 | Literature | Michael R. Gorman | The Empress Is a Man | Winner | |
| Will Roscoe and Stephen Murray (editors) | Boy-Wives and Female Husbands | Finalist | |||
| Judith Halberstam | Female Masculinity | ||||
| Diane Wood | Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton | ||||
| Leslie Feinberg | Trans Liberation | ||||
| 2000 | Literature | Jackie Kay | Trumpet | Winner | |
| Deirdre McCloskey | Crossing | Finalist | |||
| Jacobo Schifter | From Toads to Queens | ||||
| Del LaGrace and Jack Halberstam | The Drag King Book | ||||
| Jason Cromwell | Transmen and FTMs | ||||
| 2001 | Literature | David Ebershoff | The Danish Girl | Winner | |
| Karleen Pendleton Jimenez | Are You a Boy or a Girl? | Finalist | |||
| John Colapinto | As Nature Made Him | ||||
| Noelle Hawley and Ellen Samuels (editors) | Out of the Ordinary | ||||
| Chris Bohjalian | Trans-Sister Radio | ||||
| 2002 | Bisexual/Transgender Literature | Virginia Ramey Mollenkott | Omnigender: A Trans-religious Approach | Winner | |
| Bill Brnt and Carol Queen (editors) | Best Bisexual Erotica, Volume 2 | Finalist | |||
| Vanessa Sheridan | Crossing Over: Liberating the Transgendered Christian | ||||
| Jonathan Branton | Dragged!! To His Senses | ||||
| Sparrow L. Patterson | Synthetic Bi Products | ||||
| 2003 | Literature | Noelle Howey | Dress Codes | Winner | |
| Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri (editors) | Brazen Femme | Finalist | |||
| Joan Nestle, Riki Wilchins and Claire Howell (editors) | GenderQueer | ||||
| Jeffrey Eugenides | Middlesex | ||||
| T Cooper | Some of the Parts | ||||
| 2004 | Literature | Jennifer Finney Boylan | She's Not There | Winner | |
| Donna Troka, Kathleen Lebesco, and Jean Noble (editors) | The Drag King Anthology | Finalist | |||
| Justin Tanis | Trans-gendered | ||||
| Virginia Ramey and Vanessa Sheridan | Transgender Journeys | ||||
| 2005 | Literature | Mariette Pathy Allen | The Gender Frontier | Winner | |
| Jamison Green | Becoming a Visible Man | Finalist | |||
| Morty Diamond (editor) | From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond | ||||
| Julie Anne Peters | Luna | ||||
| Helen Boyd | My Husband Betty: Love, Sex and Life with a Crossdresser | ||||
| 2006 | Literature | Charlie Anders | Choir Boy | Winner | |
| Tennessee Jones | Deliver Me from Nowhere | Finalist | |||
| Judith Halberstam | In a Queer Time and Place | ||||
| Matt Kailey | Just Add Hormones | ||||
| Deborah Rudacille | The Riddle of Gender | ||||
| 2007 | Literature | Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (editors) | The Transgender Studies Reader | Winner | |
| Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter (editors) | Rights | Finalist | |||
| Leslie Feinberg | Drag King Dreams | ||||
| Alicia E. Goranson | Supervillainz | ||||
| Max Wolf Valerio | The Testosterone Files | ||||
| 2008 | Literature | Cris Beam | Transparent | Winner | |
| LeeRay M. Costa, | Male Bodies, Women's Souls | Finalist | |||
| Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore | Nobody Passes | ||||
| Eli Clare | The Marrow's Telling | ||||
| Aaron Raz and Hilda Raz | What Becomes You | ||||
| 2009 | Literature | Thea Hillman | Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) | Winner | |
| Marcus Ewert and Rex Ray | 10,000 Dresses | Finalist | |||
| Ely Shipley | Boy with Flowers | ||||
| Susan Stryker | History | ||||
| Scott Schofield | Two Truths and a Lie | ||||
| 2010 | Literature | Lynn Breedlove | Lynnee Breedlove's One Freak Show | Winner | |
| Kari Edwards | Bharat Jiva | Finalist | |||
| S. Bear Bergman | The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You | ||||
| Joy Ladin | Transmigration | ||||
| Adam Lowe | Troglodyte Rose | ||||
| 2011 | Fiction | Zoe Whittall | Holding Still for As Long As Possible | Winner | |
| Justin Hall with Diego Gomez, Fred Noland, and Jon Macy | Glamazonia: The Uncanny Super Tranny | Finalist | |||
| Catherine Ryan Hyde | Jumpstart the World | ||||
| Nonfiction | Noach Dzmura (editor) | Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community | Winner | ||
| Rebecca Swan | Assume Nothing | Finalist | |||
| Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (editors) | Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation | ||||
| Kristen Schilt | Just One of the Guys?: Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality | ||||
| Michelle Alexander and Michelle Diane Rose | The Color of Sunlight | ||||
| 2012 | Fiction | Tristan Taormino (editor) | Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica | Winner | |
| Cris Beam | I am J | Finalist | |||
| L.A. Witt | Static | ||||
| Rafe Posey | The Book of Broken Hymns | ||||
| Dana De Young | The Butterfly and the Flame | ||||
| Nonfiction | Justin Vivian Bond | Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels | Winner | ||
| Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith (editors) | Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex | Finalist | |||
| Megan M. Rohrer and Zander Keig (editors) | Letters For My Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect | ||||
| Dean Spade | Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law | ||||
| Peter Boag | Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past | ||||
| 2013 | Fiction | Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod (editors) | The Collection: Short Fiction From The Transgender Vanguard | Winner | |
| Rachel Gold | Being Emily | Finalist | |||
| Roz Kaveney | Dialectic of the Flesh | ||||
| Rae Spoon | First Spring Grass Fire | ||||
| Michael Quadland | Offspring | ||||
| Nonfiction | Anne Enke (editor) | Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies | Winner | ||
| Ryka Aoki | Seasonal Velocities | Finalist | |||
| Matt Kailey | Teeny Weenies and Other Short Subjects | ||||
| Dylan Edwards | Transposes | ||||
| 2014 | Fiction | Trish Salah | Wanting in Arabic | Winner | |
| Imogen Binnie | Nevada | Finalist | |||
| Devon Llywelyn Jones | Tiresias | ||||
| Nonfiction | Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore | The End of San Francisco | Winner | ||
| S. Bear Bergman | Blood, Marriage, Wine and Glitter | Finalist | |||
| Beatriz Preciado | Testo Junkie | ||||
| 2015 | Fiction | Casey Plett | A Safe Girl to Love | Winner | |
| La JohnJoseph | Everything Must Go | Finalist | |||
| Kim Fu | For Today I Am a Boy | ||||
| Shani Mootoo | Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab | ||||
| Alex Myers | Revolutionary: A Novel | ||||
| Nonfiction | Thomas Page McBee | Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man | Winner | ||
| Janet Mock | Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More | Finalist | |||
| Laura Erickson-Schroth | Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community | ||||
| 2016 | Fiction | Roz Kaveney | Tiny Pieces of Skull, or a Lesson in Manners | Winner | |
| Michael Scott, Jr. | Defiant | Finalist | |||
| Sassafras Lowrey | Lost Boi | ||||
| Nonfiction | Willy Wilkinson | Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency | Winner | ||
| Amy Ellis Nutt | Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family | Finalist | |||
| Zane Thimmesch-Gill | Hiding in Plain Sight | ||||
| Poetry | kari edwards | succubus in my pocket | Winner | ||
| Joy Ladin | Impersonation | Finalist | |||
| Ryka Aoki | Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul | ||||
| 2017 | Fiction | jia qing wilson-yang | Small Beauty | Winner | |
| Kai Cheng Thom | Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir | Finalist | |||
| Meredith Russo | If I Was Your Girl | ||||
| Nonfiction | Lei Ming | Life Beyond My Body: A Transgender Journey to Manhood in China | Winner | ||
| Morgan Mann Willis | Outside the XY: Black and Brown Queer Masculinity | Finalist | |||
| Julia Serano | Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism | ||||
| Samuel Peterson | Trunky (Transgender Junky): A Memoir | ||||
| Sung Yim | What About the Rest of Your Life | ||||
| Chase Joynt and Mike Hoolbloom | You Only Live Twice: Sex, Death and Transition | ||||
| Poetry | Kokumo | Reacquainted with Life | Winner | ||
| Vivek Shraya | even this page is white | Finalist | |||
| Jos Charles | Safe Space | ||||
| Cameron Awkward-Rich | Sympathetic Little Monster | ||||
| Jai Arun Ravine | The Romance of Siam: A Pocket Guide | ||||
| 2018 | Fiction | Bogi Takács (editor) | Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction | Winner | |
| Jennifer Finney Boylan | Long Black Veil | Finalist | |||
| Tobi Hill-Meyer (editor) | Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic | ||||
| Amy Heart, Sugi Pyrrophyta, and Larissa Glasser (editors) | Resilience: Surviving in the Face of Everything | ||||
| Jeanne Thornton | The Black Emerald | ||||
| Nonfiction | C. Riley Snorton | Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity | Winner | ||
| Rosalind Rosenberg | Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray | Finalist | |||
| Brice Smith | Lou Sullivan: Daring to Be a Man Among Men | ||||
| Janet Mock | Surpassing Certainty | ||||
| Poetry | Ching-In Chen | recombinant | Winner | ||
| Kai Cheng Thom | a place called Homeland | Finalist | |||
| Juliana Huxtable | Mucus in My Pineal Gland | ||||
| Julian Talamantez Brolaski | Of Mongrelitude | ||||
| Kayleb Rae Candrilli | What Runs Over | ||||
| 2019 | Fiction | Casey Plett | Little Fish | Winner | |
| Jordy Rosenberg | Confessions of the Fox: A Novel | Finalist | |||
| Akwaeke Emezi | Freshwater | ||||
| Calvin Gimpelevich | Invasions | ||||
| Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore | Sketchtasy | ||||
| Nonfiction | Julian Gill-Peterson | Histories of the Transgender Child | Winner | ||
| Thomas Page McBee | Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man | Finalist | |||
| Vivek Shraya | I'm Afraid of Men | ||||
| Aren Z. Aizura | Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment | ||||
| Samantha Allen | Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States | ||||
| Joy Ladin | The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective | ||||
| Poetry | Raquel Salas Rivera | lo terciario / the tertiary | Winner | ||
| Luna Merbruja | Heal Your Love | Finalist | |||
| Gwen Benaway | Holy Wild | ||||
| Sara Mithra | If the Color Is Fugitive | ||||
| Ely Shipley | Some Animal | ||||
| 2020 | Fiction | Hazel Jane Plante | Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) | Winner | |
| Bones McKay | Honey Walls | Finalist | |||
| M.Z. McDonnell | Poet, Prophet, Fox: The Tale of Sinnach the Seer | ||||
| Rachel Pollack | The Beatrix Gates | ||||
| Bogi Takács | The Trans Space Octopus Congregation | ||||
| Nonfiction | Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma (editors) | We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan | Winner | ||
| Andrea Long Chu | Females | Finalist | |||
| S.J. Langer | Theorizing Transgender Identity for Clinical Practice: A New Model for Understanding Gender | ||||
| T Fleischmann | Time Is the Thing A Body Moves Through | ||||
| Poetry | Xandria Phillips | HULL | Winner | ||
| Cameron Awkward-Rich | Dispatch | Finalist | |||
| Andrea Abi-Karam | EXTRATRANSMISSION | ||||
| Samuel Ace | Our Weather Our Sea | ||||
| Yanyi | The Year of Blue Water | ||||
| 2021 | Fiction | Zeyn Joukhadar | The Thirty Names of Night | Winner | |
| Nino Cipri | Finna | Finalist | |||
| Chana Porter | The Seep | ||||
| Vivek Shraya | The Subtweet | ||||
| Lydia Rogue (editor) | Trans-Galactic Bike Ride: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories of Transgender and Nonbinary Adventurers | ||||
| Nonfiction | J Mase III and Dane Figueroa Edidi | The Black Trans Prayer Book | Winner | ||
| Meredith Talusan | Fairest: A Memoir | Finalist | |||
| L Heidenreich | Nepantla Squared: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift | ||||
| Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore | The Freezer Door | ||||
| Hil Malatino | Trans Care | ||||
| Poetry | Sade LaNay | I Love You and I'm Not Dead | Winner | ||
| Aeon Ginsberg | Greyhound | Finalist | |||
| Kay Ulanday Barrett | More Than Organs | ||||
| Maxe Crandall | The Nancy Reagan Collection | ||||
| Jay Besemer | Theories of Performance | ||||
| 2022 | Fiction | Jeanne Thornton | Summer Fun | Winner | |
| Torrey Peters | Detransition, Baby | Finalist | |||
| Callum Angus | A Natural History of Transition | ||||
| Megan Milks | Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body | ||||
| Shelley Parker-Chan | She Who Became the Sun | ||||
| Nonfiction | Da’Shaun Harrison | Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness | Winner | ||
| Francisco Galarte | Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies | Finalist | |||
| Ivan Coyote | Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures | ||||
| Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt (Eds.) | Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography | ||||
| Lucie Fielding | Trans Sex: Clinical Approaches to Trans Sexualities and Erotic Embodiments | ||||
| Poetry | Mason J | Crossbones on My Life | Winner | ||
| Dani Putney | Salamat sa Intersectionality | Finalist | |||
| Lindsay Choi | Transverse | ||||
| Andrea Abi-Karam | Villainy | ||||
| Raquel Salas Rivera | x/ex/exis | ||||
| 2023 | Fiction | Cat Fitzpatrick | The Call-Out | Winner | |
| James Hannaham | Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta | Finalist | |||
| Izzy Wasserstein | All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From | ||||
| Morgan Thomas | Manywhere | ||||
| Maya Deane | Wrath Goddess Sing | ||||
| Nonfiction | Emma Grove | The Third Person | Winner | ||
| Kit Heyam | Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender | Finalist | |||
| Cecilia Gentili | Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist | ||||
| Jeremiah Moss | Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York | ||||
| Cameron Awkward-Rich | The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment | ||||
| Transgender Poetry | Kamden Ishmael Hilliard | MissSettl | Winner | ||
| Golden | A Dead Name That Learned How to Live | Finalist | |||
| Kay Gabriel | A Queen in Bucks County | ||||
| Paul Tran | All the Flowers Kneeling | ||||
| Prathna Lor | Emanations |