Lambda Literary Announces 30th Annual Awards Finalists
This morning, Lambda Literary announced the finalists for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys." The organization presents the awards in categories ranging from Lesbian Fiction to LGBTQ Nonfiction to Gay Poetry. Lambda is "the nation’s oldest and largest literary arts organization advancing LGBTQ literature," writes Ella Boureau in this morning's press release. This year's ceremony celebrates titles published in 2017, with finalists including Jen Bervin's Silk Poems (for Lesbian Poetry), Royals, by Cedar Sigo (for Gay Poetry), Julian Talamantez Brolaski's Of Mongrelitude (in Transgender Poetry). "Submissions came from major mainstream publishers and from independent presses," Boureau explains, "from both long-established and new LGBTQ publishers, as well as from emerging publish-on-demand technologies." Let's pick up and learn more, beginning there:
Visionary and Trustee Award honorees, the master of ceremonies, and celebrity presenters will be announced in April. The winners will be announced at a gala ceremony on Monday, June 4th in New York City.
“Celebrating our 30th year of Lambda Literary Award finalists is to recognize that this organization has been at the center of contemporary queer literature for decades,” said Lambda Literary Executive Director Tony Valenzuela. “This year is no different with another stellar list of authors demonstrating through their work that LGBTQ books tell richly textured stories about who we are in all our incredible diversity.”
Now for the finalists in the Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender poetry categories:
Lesbian Poetry
- Blind Girl Grunt, Constance Merritt, Headmistress Press
- Common Place, Sarah Pinder, Coach House Books
- Good Stock Strange Blood, Dawn Lundy Martin, Coffee House Press
- Kohnjehr Woman, Ana-Maurine Lara, RedBone Press
- My Ariel, Sina Queyras, Coach House Books
- Rock | Salt | Stone, Rosamond S. King, Nightboat Books
- Rummage, Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa, Little A
- Silk Poems, Jen Bervin, Nightboat Books
Gay Poetry
- Don’t Call Us Dead, Danez Smith, Graywolf Press
- Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Charif Shanahan, Crab Orchard Series in Poetry
- Nature Poem, Tommy Pico, Tin House Books
- Proprietary, Randall Mann, Persea Books
- Royals, Cedar Sigo, Wave Books
- So Far Afield, Frederick Speers, Nomadic Press
- When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, Chen Chen, BOA Editions Ltd.
- While Standing in Line for Death, CA Conrad, Wave Books
Transgender Poetry
- a place called No Homeland, Kai Cheng Thom, Arsenal Pulp Press
- Full-Metal Indigiqueer, Joshua Whitehead, Talon Books
- Mucus in My Pineal Gland, Juliana Huxtable, Wonder / Capricious
- Of Mongrelitude, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Wave Books
- recombinant, Ching-In Chen, Kelsey Street Press
Discover the finalists in all categories, and more, at Lambda Literary.