Via AfterElton:
For as long as I can remember, the Lambda Literary Awards have been my go to place for the best queer books being published. I trust them to lead me to queer books of literary merit, new queer authors, and LGBT conscious publishers. And — full disclosure — I write book reviews for the freshly minted Lambda Literary Review. For the past two award seasons, I’ve been the girl on stage handing out the trophies to the winners once announced. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation and am glad for its place in the world.
For the last 20 years, the LLF has indeed honored both queer writers and queer books. Then, in a cringe worthy moment in 2009, Lambda Literary changed its tune and announced that their awards would be given only to LGBT authors of LGBT content. Books like Maureen Johnson’s The Bermudez Triangle need not apply.
Lambda Literary has long had a sort of uncomfortably public identity crisis with their award policies. In 1993, Dorothy Allison was famously denied Lambda Literary Award nomination for Bastard Out of Carolina because it lacked LGBT content. The lesbian author’s debut novel meanwhile was nominated for the prestigious National Book Award, among others, and her short story collection, Trash, ripe with lesbian content, won two Lambda awards. Was Lambda just about LGBT content, or LGBT authors, or both?
I think I touched on this with my review of Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton.
Here was a very moving book chock full of LGBT content yet all the woman knew of the LGBT community was what she read from the book Gay New York. I mean...come on...you lives in Asheville, North Carolina...there is at least one gay bar, and when I was there, there were more lesbians in the bookstores than you could shake a stick at...go, go...talk to the people!
10 comments:
Let's look at things this way:
Back in the dark days of repression (as late as 1990), both LGBTQ-themed literature and LGBTQ writers themselves were openly repressed, censored, ostracized, and marginalized.
But with the rise of Amazon.com and other online retailers, the hate-mongers lost their stranglehold on the distribution network. Now, any kid in Idaho, any questioning housewife in the Texas panhandle, even a college guy in New York City -- all could gain access to LGBTQ-themed literature.
But what about LGBTQ authors themselves?
Heterosexual authors like Anne Rice had access to "straight" (mainstream) publishers, and even the somewhat successful ones could get gay fiction published. When they got a refusal, there was always the LGBTQ publishers (the Alyson Books, Companion Presses, the Harrington Parks) and the occasional academic publisher (if the work was scholarly).
But LGBTQ authors faced extensive homophobia at straight presses. They could not get published, even if their work was spectacular. They were forced to use the small LGBTQ publishers, with their nonexistent ad budgets.
What was Lambda Literary's rationale for being? Was it to promote LGBTQ literature -- which was breaking free of repression? Or was it to promote LGBTQ authors, who still suffered as hate-filled "mainstream" publishers continue to deny them access to editors, printing presses, and publicity?
The latter was the issue.
Anyone can find the latest LGBTQ literature. Just go to Amazon.com's LGBTQ page or the LGBTQ aisle in a bookstore, and look at the new releases. There are plenty of places which review these books.
But how could anyone know about an emerging talent like Nick Burd, struggling with his first novel and publishing the occasional short story? How could anyone know about A P.E. Ryan (aka Patrick Ryan), whose first novel had no sales and no publicity to loft it high on Amazon.com's bestseller lists and thus get him the attention he deserved?
There was only one place such authors could go, and that was Lambda Literary.
Subsequently, Lambda Literary shifted its focus to more effectively protect the weak, the unempowered, the aspect of the LGBTQ authorial milieu which needed the most assistance.
that's a very good question
So, Tim, I gathering you are a NO for opening the Lambda Literary Awards to non-LGBTQ authors. I can see the rationale behind, but I think that with the changing times and our desire to pull more people under our umbrella by calling them allies, that a separate LL award that consisted of books by our allies may not be necessary but may be a good idea. That way we have the gay author specific award and then a second award that could be awarded a non-LGBTQ person.
Wonder Man, and I don't think there is necessarily a right answer. Sadly. So this will be one of those divisive questions that tends to annoy me so very very much. But at the same time get everyone thinking.
Writer-boy, I guess I am leery of creating more categories. The LLAs are already segregating best lesbian from best gay from best bisexual literature -- as if there's any difference between good literature and good literature. We don't distinguish in these categories about lesbian stories written by men or women. Lesbian lit is lesbian lit.
I'm also leery of creating any sense that somehow LGBTQ authors are inferior to their heterosexual counterparts, or vice versa.
Part of me also doesn't want to be investigating the sexuality or gender or gender-identity (if any) of authors.
I'm not coming down on any side of this issue. I'm just pointing out that it's not as black-and-white as some commentators think.
Tim, it reminds me of an essay I believe was written by Langston Hughes about whether a black author should strive to be an author as opposed to being a black author.
I can't remember the essay title, and I'm not actually sure that L.H. was the author.
Well, you have your wish: They're open to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/awards-guidelines/
At this year's Lammies, Edward Albee got a major award from them and then said, "Thank you, but no thanks. I'm an author, not a gay author. My sexuality is meaningless to my work, and is meaningless to every good author's work. A good author is a good author, and what LL is doing is kind of dumb and stupid." (Sort of. I'm paraphrasing.)
It caused a real brouhaha, if you recall.
JP, I'd like the awards to be open to everyone. I don't want our community party to restricting others. I do expect the winners to be involved in our community and to be good writers who tell our stories well. fakes and people just trying to make a buck off of us need not apply.
Tim, I thought Edward Albee was gay, or at least played with sexuality in his work? And the point of the essay that I mentioned before was that in the essayist's opinion a black person had to be a black author, that they could not cut off that part of him or herself to become simply an author. So I'd say the same is true of gay authors. IDK
I agree, Kyle, but I also agree with Tim's point: the LLA was there not simple to support gay characters but to support gay authors, who definitely at the time of the awards founding were being shunned by most if not all of the award-giving establishment.
Damn, I'm such a Libra!
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