My article on the 2009 Lambda Literary Awards is up on CarnalNation, and I’m proud of it. I loved going to the awards and I am grateful to CarnalNation for sending me – and to Seal Press for sending me a couple of the books that were finalists!
It’s amazing how little news coverage the awards got, really. I was looking around as I was drafting this and all I saw were bitty little mentions on blogs, no major news coverage. I guess that’s not surprising, just a little sad.
Here’s the beginning of my article, to entice you to read it:
The 21st annual Lambda Literary Awards returned to New York City for the 2009 ceremony at the New School for Graduate Studies in midtown Manhattan, after presenting last year’s awards in Los Angeles. It seems appropriate that the awards would come of legal drinking age in Gotham, amidst solid grey skies and a drizzle, where writers stoop over bourbon in dark East Village bars. Writerly brooding just isn’t the same on the beach with bikinis and sunshine.
The Awards began in 1988, and though the specific categories have evolved since then, with the addition of bisexual and transgender categories and, eventually, the fizzling of the AIDS-related category, the Awards reflect the movements of the queer community for the past twenty years, and the best of the best new and seasoned authors are recognized and awarded. It is one of my life-goals to read all the winners—at least for the lesbian fiction category, if not all the others.
As someone whose life was changed and saved by queer books, I was thrilled to be attending the awards ceremony. I sat in the back so I could see the authors jump up when their name was announced after “and the winner is…” so I could see their lovers’ and friends’ faces as they hugged, clapped their hands, kissed on the cheek. And then the long walk to the stage and the acceptance speech: “I know it’s cliché to say that I didn’t prepare anything because I didn’t expect to win, but it’s true!”
Read the whole thing over at CarnalNation.
The complete list of winners is at the end of the article; pick out just one of them, at least, and read it, will you? These are amazing books which have been honored, and deserve reading.
