The Publishing Triangle, an association of queer book industry professionals and readers, announced the winners of its annual literary awards, which recognize excellence in LGBTQ+ literature.
Stephanie Wambugu won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction for her novel Lonely Crowds. Wambugu was recently honored as a member of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 cohort. The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ+ Fiction went to Scott Alexander Hess for his novel Drought.
Nicholas Boggs was given the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction for his biography of James Baldwin, Baldwin: A Love Story; the book was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the PEN/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award for Biography. Sam Tabet won the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction for Beyond the Lesbian Vampire: Reclaiming the Violent Lesbian in Contemporary Queer Horror.
The Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature was awarded to Jzl Jmz for Local Woman, while Lev AC Rosen won the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing for Mirage City. The winner of the Jacqueline Woodson Award for LGBTQ+ Young Adult and Children’s Literature was H.E. Edgmon for We Can Never Leave, and the Amber Hollibaugh Award for LGBTQ+ Social Justice Writing went to John Birdsall for What is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution.
The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry was given to Achy Obejas for The Boy Kingdom / El reino de los varones: Poems / Poemas, while Richard Siken won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for I Do Know Some Things.
The Publishing Triangle Awards were established in 1989. Previous winners include Lori Ostlund for The Bigness of the World, Ocean Vuong for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Jenn Shapland for My Autobiography of Carson McCullers.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
