Douglas Stuart, Brandon Taylor, K-Ming Chang, and Juli Delgado Lopera are among the finalists for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards, which honor outstanding achievement in LGBTQ+ literature.
Stuart made the shortlist in the Gay Fiction category for Shuggie Bain, which was a Kirkus Prize finalist and a Booker Prize winner. Taylor’s Real Life was also named a finalist, as was Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness, Joon Oluchi Lee’s Neotenica, and Dennis E. Staples’ This Town Sleeps.
Chang’s Bestiary and Delgado Lopera’s Fiebre Tropical were named finalists in the Lesbian Fiction category, along with Francesca Ekwuyasi’s Butter Honey Pig Bread, Jennifer Steil’s Exile Music, and Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore made the shortlist for Transgender Nonfiction with The Freezer Door, which is also a finalist for this year’s PEN/Jean Stein Award. The other finalists are J Mase III Dane Figueroa Edidi for The Black Trans Prayer Book, Meredith Talusan for Fairest, Linda Heidenreich for Nepantla Squared: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift, and Hil Malatino for Trans Care.
Other books to be named finalists include C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Bisexual Fiction), Chana Porter’s The Seep (Transgender Fiction), Shayla Lawson’s This Is Major (Bisexual Nonfiction), and Kacen Callender’s King and the Dragonflies (LGBTQ Children’s/Middle Grade).
The winners will be announced at a virtual ceremony on June 1 featuring a performance by singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
