Lambda Literary Foundation

Lambda Literary traces its beginnings back to 1987 when L. Page (Deacon) Maccubbin, owner of Lambda Rising Bookstore in Washington, DC, published the first Lambda Book Report, which brought critical attention to LGBTQ books.

The Lambda Literary Awards were born in 1989. At that first gala event, honors went to such distinguished writers as National Book Award finalist Paul Monette (author of Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir), Dorothy Allison (Trash), Alan Hollinghurst (The Swimming-Pool Library), and Edmund White (The Beautiful Room is Empty). The purpose of the awards in the early years was to identify and celebrate the best lesbian and gay books in the year of their publication. The awards gave national visibility ^[2][3] to a literature that had established a firm if nascent beachhead through a network of dynamic lesbian and gay publishers and bookstores springing up across America. Since their inception, the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony has consistently drawn an audience representing every facet of publishing. The awards have ranged over many categories, reflecting the wide spectrum of LGBTQ books, and from the very first year they have made the statement that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans stories are part of the literature of the nation. The Lammys' first virtual ceremony, in response to COVID-19, was held in 2021.^[4]

Lambda Book Report, meanwhile, grew into a comprehensive review periodical, and together with the Lambda Literary Awards, these programs cemented the reality that a distinct, definable LGBT literature existed. Lambda Literary was created in 1997 as a 501(3)(c) corporation; its first Executive Director was Jim Marks.

In 2007, led by board president Katherine V. Forrest and executive director Charles Flowers, Lambda Literary founded its Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, a residency designed to offer intensive and sophisticated instruction to selected writers over a carefully designed one week period. Faculty have included well-known and highly regarded writer-teachers such as Dorothy Allison, John Rechy, Fenton Johnson, Katherine V. Forrest, Claire McNab, Bernard Cooper, Nicola Griffith, Ellen Bass, Rigoberto Gonzalez, D. A. Powell, Ellery Washington and Eloise Klein Healy. The retreat provides open access to industry professionals and the opportunity for fellows to create for themselves an ongoing community of practice as they advance in their craft and careers. It is one of Lambda’s most important initiatives: it represents the future of LGBTQ literature.

In early 2010, in an effort led by board member Nicola Griffith, Lambda Literary funded, staffed, and launched an online presence at LambdaLiterary.org which celebrates, supports, serves, informs, entertains, and connects the whole of the diverse community that creates and supports lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans literature. The website replaced the Lambda Book Report.

In 2012 Lambda Literary launched the LGBTQ Writers in School program, where LGBTQ writers visit K-12 classrooms to discuss LGBTQ literature with young people.^[5]

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Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan James Hollinghurst is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize.

Edmund White

Edmund White

Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.

Katherine V. Forrest

Katherine V. Forrest

Katherine V. Forrest is a Canadian-born American writer, best known for her novels about lesbian police detective Kate Delafield. Her books have won and been finalists for Lambda Literary Award twelve times, as well as other awards. She has been referred to by some "a founding mother of lesbian fiction writing."

John Rechy

John Rechy

John Francisco Rechy is a Mexican-American novelist and essayist. His novels, are written extensively about gay culture in Los Angeles and wider America, among other subject matter. City of Night, his debut novel published in 1963, was a best seller. Drawing on his own background, he has contributed to Mexican-American literature, notably with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which has been taught in several Chicano studies courses throughout the United States. But, even after the success of his first novel, he still worked as a prostitute, teaching during the day, and hustling at night. He worked as a prostitute into his forties while also teaching at UCLA. Through the 1970's and 1980's he dealt with personal drug use, as well as the AIDS crisis, which killed many of his friends.

Fenton Johnson

Fenton Johnson

John Fenton Johnson is an American writer and professor of English and LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona.

Claire McNab

Claire McNab

Claire McNab is the pseudonym of Claire Carmichael, an Australian writer. While pursuing a career as a high school teacher in Sydney, she began her writing career with comedy plays and textbooks. She left teaching in the mid-1980s to become a full-time writer. In her native Australia she is known for her self-help and children's books.

Bernard Cooper

Bernard Cooper

Bernard Cooper is an American novelist and short story writer. He was born on October 3, 1951, in Hollywood, California. His writing is in part autobiographical and influenced by his own experiences as a gay man. Bernard Cooper's fiction and essays have received several awards. He has both his BFA and MFA in art from California Institute of the Arts.

Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith

Nicola Griffith is a British-American novelist, essayist, and teacher. She has won the Washington State Book Award, Nebula Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, World Fantasy Award and six Lambda Literary Awards.

Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass is an American poet and author. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and a Lambda Literary Award for her 2002 book Mules of Love. She co-authored the 1991 child sexual abuse book The Courage to Heal. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2014 and was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2017. Bass has taught poetry at Pacific University and founded poetry programs for prison inmates.

D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell

Douglas A. Powell is an American poet.

Eloise Klein Healy

Eloise Klein Healy

Eloise Klein Healy is an American poet. She has published five books of poetry and three chapbooks. Her collection of poems, Passing, was a finalist for the 2003 Lambda Literary Awards in Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award from The Publishing Triangle. Healy has also received the Grand Prize of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and has received six Pushcart Prize nominations.