LibGuides: CRWR 208: Queer Bodies, Queer Futures: Awards, Prizes, Publishers & Distributors

Finding Awards & Prizes

Literary Awards & Prizes

The following literary awards and prizes can be a great resource for discovering current and historical works of literature related to queer identity.

Lambda Literary Awards
"The Lambda Literary Awards (fondly known as the Lammys) were created in 1989 to garner national visibility for LGBTQ books, which had established a foothold through a nascent network of lesbian and gay publishers and bookstores. Today, the Lammys celebrate more than 150 LGBTQ writers across 26 categories spanning a number of genres, lived identities, and experiences. We continue to proudly recognize works by self-published authors and independent and academic presses alongside works supported by traditional big 5 publishers."
Otherwise Awards
"The Otherwise Award celebrates science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender. We encourage each jury to take an expansive view of “science fiction and fantasy,” considering works that don’t fit into a narrow genre definition. We also seek out works that have a broad, intersectional, trans-inclusive understanding of gender in the context of race, class, nationality, disability, and more."
Stonewall Book Awards
"The first and most enduring award for LGBTQIA+ books is the Stonewall Book Awards, sponsored by the American Library Association's Rainbow Round Table (formerly the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table). Since Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah received the first award in 1971, many other books have been honored for exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQIA+ experience."

The online catalogs of literary distributors can be a useful resource for discovering works of literature related to queer identity.

Look for subject, category, or genre filters that include options related to queer identity.

Asterism Books
"Asterism Books is a trade distributor and online bookstore designed, built, and run by independent publishers. We aim to bring the best of small-press publishing together in one place, highlighting the quality and diversity of the independent publishing landscape."

Literary publishers who focus on work by queer-identified authors, or which treats subjects related to queer identity, can be a useful resource.

Dorothy, a publishing project
"Established in 2009, Dorothy, a publishing project is a press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction, mostly by women."
Tender Buttons
"Publishing experimental poetry by women and other gender expansive beings […] Tender Buttons aims to publish the best in experimental women's writing. The poetics of all Tender Buttons books gives rise to an extraordinary range of innovative forms and modes including conceptual projects, cut-up, the boundary between life and art, documenting consciousness, refrigeration of poetic form, radical intertextuality, the question of generations and generativity and how to write against, out of, and around another’s writing."