The Lambda Literary Awards

The 37th (37th!) Annual Lambda Literary Awards (Lammys) have announced their finalists, and My Withered Legs and Other Essays is included in the Lesbian Memoir/Biography category! This makes two for two for my last two books!

I am thrilled! And I am not alone. There are four more of us finalists. Here we all are.

Mama: A Queer Black Woman's Story of a Family Lost and Found by Nikkya Hargrove

"In this searing and ultimately uplifting memoir, Nikkya Hargrove describes how she—fresh out of college, Black, and queer—adopted her baby brother after their often incarcerated mother died, and how she determined to create the kind of family she never had."

Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte

Delporte’s idyllic colored pencil drawings contrast with the near urgency that structures her confessional memoir. Each page is laden with revelation and enveloped in organic, natural shapes—rocks, flowers, intertwined bodies, women’s hair blowing in the wind—captured with devotion. The vitality of these forms interspersed with Delporte’s flowing handwriting hold space for her vivid and affecting observations.

The Mary Years by Julie Marie Wade

“Who knew Our Lady of the Tam Toss, ‘70s icon Mary Richards, would provide the perfect bridge from a strict ‘50s-values Catholic upbringing for a queer ‘90s teen? In this unique memoir strung from lyric moments like beads on a rosary, Wade writes her own tender credo—part filmography, part hagiography, part coming-of-age coming-out story—of what it means to be a modern woman."—Heidi Czerwiec

Wrong is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art by Erica N. Cardwell

Wrong Is Not My Name weaves together autobiography, criticism, and theory, and considers how Black women create alternative, queer, and “hysterical” lives through visual culture and performance. In poetic, interdisciplinary essays—combining analytical and lyrical stream-of-consciousness—Cardwell examines archetypes such as the lascivious Jezebel, the caretaking Mammy, and the elusive Sapphire to formulate new and inventive ways to write about art.

My Withered Legs and Other Essays by Sandra Gail Lambert

A seventy-year history of disability is the framework for Sandra Gail Lambert’s collection of personal essays. Here are tales of lesbian love, aging, and the body’s changing relationship to itself and the world. Along with the uncertainties, triumphs, and often slapstick humor of becoming a writer later in life, these essays are grounded in queer, crip, and climate politics.