Friday Reads: Lambda Lit & Publishing Triangle Awards

Posted on March 18, 2011 in swag | 1 Comment

This week, the Lambda Literary Awards and Publishing Triangle Awards announced their finalists for their 2011 prizes.

I was a judge this year (can I reveal that yet?—I won’t tell you what for until I know for sure) so I’ve been reading reading reading many books in the past few months. I read a lot anyway, but this has been a crunch. It was exciting to have a part in choosing the best ones.

The Lammys award ceremony will be held Thursday, May 26, 2011 at the School of Visual Arts Theater in New York City (333 W. 23rd St), followed by a private after-party nearby. I’ve attended the last two years (and wrote about them both for CarnalNation.com), and I’ll be attending again this year. It’s such a pleasure to show up and be familiar with so many of the books and authors, so many of the presenters and judges, and to feel like I’m really part of the queer literary community.

(And next year, I’ll have my own book out!)

I encourage you to look through these great lists and pick a couple to read, even if you don’t usually read queer stuff, even if you don’t care about the awards, just to show your support. I still have quite a lot more I would love to read, I haven’t read any of the poetry this year, and there are many that I haven’t Here’s a couple of my favorites—out of the ones that I’ve read, anyway—that I highly recommend.

Two of the nominees even include my stories: Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 and Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica.

1 Comment | Category: swag | Tags: amber dawn, best lesbian erotica 2011, books, friday reads, gender outlaws: the next generation, kate bornstein, lambda literary awards, publishing triangle, queer, s. bear bergman, sometimes she lets me: best butch/femme erotica, sub rosa

Lambda Literary Nominees Featuring “This One’s Going to Last Forever”

Posted on March 16, 2010 in swag | 1 Comment

The Lambda Literary Award nominees were announced today, and as usual I’m making a checklist of ones I’ve read, ones I’d like to read, and the ones I think will win be finalists. And, as usual, the only transgender content is in the specific “Transgender” category, though the “Bisexual” category has split into fiction and non-fiction because, it seems, there are finally enough nominees to warrant it. Are there really that few books on trans and bisexual issues? Puzzling. Overall this year, there are 112 finalists in 23 categories. I’m sure there’s got to be a book or two or five in there that you’d love to read. Check it out.

Special congratulations to Nairne Holtz, whose book This One’s Going to Last Forever (Insomniac Press) was nominated in the Lesbian Fiction category. Holtz has a short story called “Bait and Switch” in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009, an anthology in which I also have a story, and when we were both in New York City at the end of 2009 for the annual Best Lesbian Erotica reading at the Drunken! Careening! Writers! reading series at KGB bar, hosted by Kathleen Warnock (who is coming to read at the very first Sideshow!), and I have had a chance to read This One’s Going to Last Forever. It is a collection of short stories and a novella. Here’s the description:

This One’s Going to Last Forever reflects both the naive optimism of those who have yet to learn about love and the cynicism of those who feel that by now they should know better.

Clara, a university student working at the McGill Daily, discovers that in love and politics, commitment is often more imagined than real. Kelly and Sonya share a bond that has less to do with love than with their dependence on each other and a succession of friends who supply them with heroin. A middle-aged man who performs drive-through weddings dressed as Elvis realizes, as he marries his first same-sex couple, that the only domestic partner he is ever likely to have is his ailing father. But when he ends his latest relationship, an unlikely friendship results.

The characters in these darkly comic stories and novella may be searching for love in all the wrong places, but they are also able to find love in the most unexpected places.

The Lambda Literary Foundation recently relaunched their website and it’s quite spiffy, by the way.

1 Comment | Category: swag | Tags: awards, books, I love the book design and cover, insomniac press, lambda literary awards, queer, read more books, swag

Pioneers, Visionaries, Safe Havens, and Glitter

Posted on June 19, 2009 in activism | No Comments

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.