Read Lambda Literary Award Winners
- 07/16/2024
- 16:41
- maureen
The Lambda Literary Awards (also known as the Lammys) was created in 1989 to showcase LGBTQIA+ books. The books listed below are either in Seymour Library’s collection or available in the Finger Lakes Library System. A full list of winners is available at the Lambda Literary website.
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Description: When a famous iconoclastic artist and shape-shifter dies suddenly, her widow, CM, begins writing her wife’s biography and opens a vast Pandora’s box of secrets and explores the history of the fascist theocracy where she lived.
Genre: Literary fiction; LGBTQIA+ fiction; Alternate histories
Family Meal by Byran Washington
Description: Haunted by the ghost of Kai, the love of his life, Cam returns to his hometown of Houston where he reconnects with his former best friend, TJ, and his family’s bakery and wonders if they can find a way back to being okay again.
Genre: Literary fiction; LGBTQIA+ fiction; African American fiction
We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
Description: Casey McQuiston meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in this mid-century rom-dram about a scrappy reporter and a newspaper mogul’s son.
Genre: LGBTQIA+ romances; Historical romances
The Apartment on Poppy Hill by Nina LaCour
Description: Determined to make two new tenants feel welcome, bighearted, curious, and mischievous 9-year-old Ella, who knows all the neighbors except for the mysterious Robinsons who live on the top floor, hopes a special celebration will change that.
Genre: Mysteries; Early chapter books; Humorous stories
Dear Mothman by Robin Gow
Description: After the death of his best friend and the only other trans boy at school, Noah starts writing letters expressing his feelings to the humanoid creature Mothman and risks everything when he treks into the woods to prove Mothman’s existence.
Genre: LGBTQIA+ fiction; Novels in verse
Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian
Description: Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this sweeping intergenerational story, examining queer identity at the end of different decades, follows three boys in the same Iranian family as they each gain a new understanding of their history, culture–and themselves.
Genre: Realistic fiction; Historical fiction; Family sagas
A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll
Description: In Emily Carroll’s haunting adult graphic novel horror story A Guest in the House, a young woman marries a kind dentist only to realize that there’s a dark mystery surrounding his former wife’s death.
Genre: Comics and graphic novels; Horror comics
Dance With Me by Luanne Rice (Coming soon!)
Description: Returning to her hometown of Twin Rivers, Rhode Island, after a fourteen-year absence, free-spirited Jane Porter is drawn to Dylan Chadwick, an ex-federal agent and recent returnee fleeing the nightmare of his former life.
Genre: Relationship fiction; Literary fiction; Adult books for young adults
Available through FLLS
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Description: Giving up her future as a pianist to take care of her parents, the narrator starts working at a high-end beauty and wellness store in NYC, which affords her entry into a new world of privilege where she discovers, beneath the fancy creams and tinctures, lies a terrible truth threatening to consume her.
Genre: Literary fiction; Horror; Satire and parodies; Debut title
Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel
Description: Phoebe Forde has a new home, a new name, and is newly thirty. An Irish transplant and PhD candidate, she’s overeducated and underpaid, but finally settling into her new life in Copenhagen. Almost three years into her gender transition, Phoebe has learned to move through the world carefully, savoring small moments of joy. After all, a woman without a past can be anyone she wants. But an unexpected visit from her ex-girlfriend Grace brings back memories of Dublin and the life she thought she’d left behind. Over the course of a weekend, their romance rekindles into something sweet and radically unfamiliar as Grace helps Phoebe navigate the jagged edges of nostalgia and hope.
Genre: LGBTQIA+ fiction
Trace Evidence by Charif Shanaham (eBook)
Description: Charif Shanahan continues his piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad.
Genre: Poetry
Lesbian Love Story by Amelia Possanza
Description: Sharing her journey to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the 20th century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed and where their memories echo and live on, the author, along the way, discovers her own love and adds her record to the archive.
Genre: Autobiographies and memoirs; Debut title; Life stories; History Writing
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane
Description: When the Department of Balance adopts a radical new form of law enforcement, Kris, a new mother raising a child alone after her wife dies, finds support in a community of fellow misfits who defy the Department to lift one another up in solidarity and hope.
Genre: Dystopian fiction; LGBTQIA+ fiction
Looking for more books and categories? View the complete list of finalists or explore an extensive directory with previous Lammy finalists and winners dating all the back to 1988!