Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Awarded forLiterary award
Sponsored byLambda Literary Foundation
DateAnnual
Websitelambdaliterary.org/awards/

The Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award established in 1994, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about lesbians. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.[1]

Recipients

List of Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography Recipients
Year Author Work Result Ref.
1994 Josyane Savigneau Marguerite Yourcenar Winner [2]
Phyllis Burke Family Values Finalist [2]
Jewelle Gomez Forty-Three Septembers
Rose Gladney (editor) How Am I To Be Heard: Letters of Lillian Smith
David Sweetman Mary Renault
1995 Renate Stendhal (editor) Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures Winner [3]
Mab Segrest Memoir of a Race Traitor Finalist [3]
Elizabeth Bishop One Art: Letters
Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer and Chris Fisher Serving in Silence
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz The Power and the Passion of M. Carey Thomas
1996 Erica Fischer Aimee & Jaguar Winner [4]
Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch And Say Hi to Joyce Finalist [4]
Susan E. Cayliff Babe
Claudia Brenner with Hannah Ashley Eight Bullets
Dorothy Allison Two or Three Things I Know for Sure
1997 Doris Grumbach Life in a Day Winner [5]
Candace Gingrich Accidental Activist Finalist [5]
Torie Osborn Coming Home to America
Helen Sheehy Eva Le Gallienne
Honor Moore The White Blackbird
1998 Barbara Wilson Blue Windows: a Christian Science Childhood Winner [6]
Margot Peters May Sarton: a Biography Finalist [6]
Kim Chernin My Life as a Boy
Daphne Scholinski and Jane Meredith Adams The Last Time I Wore a Dress
Hermione Lee Virginia Woolf
1999 Alison Bechdel The Indelible Alison Bechdel; Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out for Winner [7]
Joan Nestle A Fragile Union Finalist [7]
Rodger Streitmatter Empty Without You
Sally Cline Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John
Kate Summerscale The Queen of Whale Cay
2000 Diana Souhami The Trials of Radclyffe Hall Winner [8]
Kay Turner Baby Precious Always Shines Finalist [8]
Blanche Wiesen Cook Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2: 1933-1938
Barrie Jean Borich My Lesbian Husband
Karla Jay Tales of the Lavender Menace
2001 Judith Barrington Lifesaving Winner [9]
Amber Hollibaugh My Dangerous Desires Finalist [9]
June Jordan Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood
Carole Maso The Room Lit by Roses
Joan Schenkar Truly Wilde
2007 Alison Bechdel Fun Home Winner [10]
Barbara Sjoholm Incognito Street Finalist [10]
Bettina Aptheker Intimate Politics
Hilary Carlip Queen of the Oddballs
Catherine Friend Hit by a Farm
2008 Nicola Griffith And Now We Are Going to Have a Party Winner [11][12]
Marusya Bociurkiw Comfort Food for Breakups Finalist [12]
Amy Hoffman An Army of Ex-Lovers
Janet Malcolm Two Lives: Gertrude & Alice
Jacqueline Taylor Waiting for the Call
2009 Maureen Seaton Sex Talks to Girls: A Memoir Winner [13]
Susan Griffin Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy Finalist [13]
Thea Hillman Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word)
Joanne Passet Sex Variant Woman
Abbe Smith Case of a Lifetime
2010 Joan Schenkar The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith Winner [14]
Alix Dobkin My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement Finalist [14]
Ariel Schrag Likewise: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag
Mary Cappello Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life
Terry Galloway Mean Little deaf Queer
2011 Barbara Hammer Hammer!: Making Movies Out of Sex and Life Winner (tie) [15]
Julie Marie Wade Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures
Katherine A. Briccetti Blood Strangers: A Memoir Finalist [16]
Chely Wright Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer
Amie Klempnauer Miller She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood
2012 Jeanne Córdova When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution Winner [17]
Karleen Pendleton Jimenez How to Get a Girl Pregnant Finalist
Catherine Friend Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet
Julie Marie Wade Small Fires: Essays [18]
Jane Rule Taking My Life
2013 Jeanette Winterson Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Winner [19][20]
Judy Grahn A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet Finalist [19]
Lisa Cohen All We Know: Three Lives
Alison Bechdel Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama
Luisita Lopez Torregrosa Before the Rain
Sarah Schulman The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
2014 Barrie Jean Borich Body Geographic Winner [21][22]
Donna Minkowitz Growing up Golem Finalist [21]
Annie Lanzillotto L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir
Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology
2015 AlethEa Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith Winner [23]
Lynette Loeppky Cease – a memoir of love, loss and desire Finalist [24]
Kelly Cogswell Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger
Ariel Gore The End of Eve
Terry Mutchler Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America
2016 Kate Carroll de Gutes Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear Winner [25][26][27]
Cat Cora Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef’s Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness Finalist [28]
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Dirty River
Carrie Brownstein Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
Allison Gruber You’re Not Edith
2017 Gloria Joseph ody, Undone: Living On After Great Pain Winner [29]
Ma-Nee Chacaby A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder Finalist [29]
Tig Notaro I’m Just a Person
Joanne Passet Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier
2018 Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich The Fact of a Body Winner [30][31]
Melissa Febos Abandon Me: Memoirs Finalist [32]
Eileen Myles Afterglow
Renate Stendhal Kiss Me Again, Paris: A Memoir
Anne-christine d'Adesky The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris
2019 Zahra Patterson Chronology Winner [33]
Barrie Jean Borich Apocalypse, Darling Finalist [34]
Julia Van Haaften Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography
Sandra Gail Lambert A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir
Marusya Bociurkiw Food Was Her Country: The Memoir of a Queer Daughter
Sarah Viren MINE: Essays
Esther Newton My Butch Career: A Memoir
Lindsay Nixon nîtisânak
2020 Samra Habib We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir Winner [35][36]
Benjamin Moser Sontag: Her Life and Work Finalist [37][38]
Saidiya Hartman Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
Edie Windsor with Joshua Lyon A Wild and Precious Life
Jaquira Díaz Ordinary Girls
Julia Koets The Rib Joint: A Memoir In Essays
T Kira Madden Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
Elissa Altman Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing
2021 Jenn Shapland My Autobiography of Carson McCullers Winner [39][40][41]
Tania De Rozario And The Walls Come Crumbling Down Finalist [42]
Tana Wojczuk Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity
Nina Kennedy Practicing for Love: A Memoir
Lori Soderlind The Change: My Great American, Postindustrial, Midlife Crisis Tour
2022 Sophie Santos The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had) Winner [43][44]
Grace Perry The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture Finalist [45]
Leslie Cohen The Audacity of a Kiss: Love, Art, and Liberation
Jonathan Ned Katz The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams
Adele Bertei Why Labelle Matters
2023 Kathryn Schulz Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness Winner [46]
Raquel Gutiérrez Brown Neon Finalist [47]
Putsata Reang Ma and Me
Chris Belcher Pretty Baby: A Memoir
Neema Avashia Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place
2024 Lamya H Hijab Butch Blues Finalist [48]
Amelia Possanza Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives
Vi Khi Nao Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche
Sarah Viren To Name the Bigger Lie
Lynnée Denise Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters

References

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