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Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition

Lambda Literary Award Is Created

by Robert Ridinger

Date: June 2, 1989

Locale: Washington, D.C.

Categories: Literature; publications; organizations and institutions

Key Figures

Deacon Maccubbin owner of Lambda Rising bookstore and creator of the award

Edmund White (b. 1940), writer who gave the first awards’ lecture

Jewelle Gomez (b. 1948), poet and keynote speaker at the first ceremony

Armistead Maupin (b. 1944), author of the Tales of the City series and emcee of the first ceremony

Summary of Event

The first annual Lambda Literary Award banquet, sponsored by the periodical Lambda Book Report, was timed to coincide with the convention of the American Booksellers Association. The ceremony, held on June 2, 1989, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., marked the beginning of the first formal recognition extended exclusively to writing by LGBT authors in a ceremony by the publishing industry. The awards have served as a stimulus to the growth of all components of this literary genre since that time.

Not surprisingly, the idea for the award, soon to be known as the “Lammy,” originated in one of the oldest LGBT bookstores in the United States, Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C., founded in 1974, and its bimonthly trade journal, the Lambda Book Report. In 1987, store owner Deacon Maccubbin and two of his staff members had discussed the absence of works by exclusively LGBT authors from the then-extant array of literature awards.

An announcement of the proposed new award and calls for nominations for the competition in twelve categories was sent through notices in the Lambda Book Report, which at the time had been widely distributed as an insert in local LGBT newspapers and through private subscriptions. Fifty-three recommended works issued by thirty-one publishers in the classes of LGBT nonfiction, fiction, small presses, poetry, first novels, mystery and science fiction, and AIDS-related works, by fifty-eight different authors published in 1988, were nominated. The work of some individuals, such as Betty Berzon, Allan Hollinghurst, Karen Thompson, Judy Grahn, and Michael Nava, was submitted under more than one category.

During the ceremony, author Edmund White delivered the first Bill Whitehead Lecture, named for the editor who assisted White and many other LGBT authors in placing their work with mainstream publishing houses. The lecture was awarded by the Publishing Triangle, founded in 1988 as a caucus of lesbians and gays working in the publishing industry. White called upon the writers’ community to continue “the recording of our remarkable differences.”

The event was emceed by writer Armistead Maupin, creator of the popular Tales of the City series. Especially memorable was the keynote address by poet Jewelle Gomez, who sharply criticized gay and lesbian writers for going to major houses seeking what she termed “mainstream heterosexual acceptance.” She admonished the audience to “stay tough when the going gets soft.”

Given their multiple nominations, the winning of six of the twelve awards by Michael Nava, Dorothy Alison, and Paul Monette was exciting if not totally surprising. Monette’s personal volume Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir took both the AIDS and gay men’s nonfiction categories. The poetry award went to the collection Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, while the editor’s award was presented by Jane Troxelll to Why Can’t Sharon Kowalski Come Home?

The publisher’s service award went to Sasha Alyson of Alyson Publications, both for his decade-long support of LGBT literature and for his coordination of the project that produced the free book You Can Do Something About AIDS. Less-familiar award recipients included Antoinette Azolakov for her lesbian mystery novel Skiptrace, Sarah Lucia Hoagland for the nonfiction work Lesbian Ethics, and Madelyn Arnold for Bird-Eyes, the winner as a lesbian first novel.

Significance

The creation of the Lambda Literary Award, although not the first award for LGBT writing, was the first to address specifically a rapidly diversifying genre of LGBT writing in all its forms. It provided a forum for publicizing new works and emerging creative talents. In 1989, the categories of humor, children’s and young adult books, and anthologies were added. Over the years the categorizations have specified an increasing number of identities (bisexual, transgender, etc.) and genres of writing (mystery, memoir, graphic novel, and so on). What distinguishes the Lambda Award from the award of the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table, inaugurated in 1970, is the Lambda’s broad framework in determining recipients. The award categories are far more specific than those of the American Library Association.

On May 1, 1996, the Lambda Literary Foundation was incorporated in Washington, D.C., as a national organization dedicated to promoting the cause of LGBT literature and recognizing new writers. The foundation had managed the Lambda Book Award and ceremony, published the Lambda Book Report (later Lambda Literary Review) and the James White Review (published through 2005). They also presented the Lambda Literary Festival, an annual writer’s conference, until it ended operations in 2005. In 2007 the held their first Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. In 2010 Lambda Literary launched an online presence (LambdaLiterary.org), and in 2012 they began a pilot school program where LGBT writers interact with students.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Ridinger, Robert. "Lambda Literary Award Is Created." Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=LGBTQ2E_0203.

APA 7th

Ridinger, R. (2017). Lambda Literary Award Is Created. In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Ridinger, Robert. "Lambda Literary Award Is Created." Edited by Robert C. Evans. Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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