Judy Grahn Award

The Judy Grahn Award is an annual literary award, presented by Publishing Triangle to honor works of non-fiction of relevance to the lesbian community. First presented in 1997, the award was named in honor of American poet and cultural theorist Judy Grahn.

Recipients

Award winners and finalists^[1]

Year	Author	Title	Publisher	Result	Ref.
1997	Bernadette Brooten	Love Between Women		Winner
	Honor Moore	White Blackbird		Finalist
	Leslie Feinberg	Transgender Warriors		Finalist
1998	Margot Peters	May Sarton		Winner
	Amy Hoffman	Hospital Time		Finalist
	Sherrie Inness	The Lesbian Menace		Finalist
1999	Jack Halberstam	Female Masculinity		Winner
	Alison Bechdel	The Incredible Bechdel		Finalist
	Jill Johnston	Admission Accomplished		Finalist
2000	Hilary Lapsley	Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women	University of Massachusetts Press	Winner
	Joan Larkin (ed.)	A Woman Like That: Lesbian and Bisexual Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories	Avon	Finalist
	Lillian Faderman	To Believe in Women	Houghton Mifflin	Finalist
2001	Amber Hollibaugh	My Dangerous Desires	Duke University Press	Winner
	Bonnie J. Morris	Girl Reel	Coffee House Press	Finalist
	Carole Maso	The Room Lit by Roses	Counterpoint	Finalist
2002	Laura L. Doan	Fashioning Sapphism	Columbia University Press	Winner
	Adrienne Rich	Arts of the Possible	W. W. Norton	Finalist
	Suzanna Danuta Walters	All the Rage	University of Chicago Press	Finalist
2003	Terry Wolverton	Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Women’s Building	City Lights	Winner
	Magie Dominic	The Queen of Peace Room	Wilfrid Laurier University Press	Finalist
	Suzanna Rodriguez	Wild at Heart	Ecco/HarperCollins	Finalist
2004	Lillian Faderman	Naked in the Promised Land	Houghton Mifflin	Winner
	Andrew Wilson	Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith	Bloomsbury	Finalist
	Casey Charles	The Sharon Kowalski Case: Lesbian and Gay Rights on Trial	University Press of Kansas	Finalist
2005	Alison Smith	Name All the Animals	Scribner	Winner
	Alexis De Veaux	Warrior Poet: A Life of Audre Lorde	W. W. Norton	Finalist
	Evelyn C. White	Alice Walker	W. W. Norton	Finalist
2006	Tania Katan	My One-Night Stand with Cancer	Alyson Books	Winner	[2]
	Diana Souhami	Wild Girls	St. Martin’s Press	Finalist
	Gretchen Legler	On the Ice	Milkweed Editions	Finalist
2007	Alison Bechdel	Fun Home	Houghton Mifflin	Winner	[3]
	Catherine Friend	Hit by a Farm	Marlowe & Company	Finalist
	Marcia Gallo	Different Daughters	Carroll & Graf	Finalist
2008	Janet Malcolm	Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice	Yale University Press	Winner	[4]
	Amy Hoffman	An Army of Ex-Lovers	University of Massachusetts Press	Finalist
	Sharon Marcus	Between Women	Princeton University Press	Finalist
2009	Andrea Weiss	In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain	University of Chicago Press	Winner	[5]
	Nancy D. Polikoff	Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage	Beacon Press	Finalist
	Regina Kunzel	Criminal Intimacy	University of Chicago Press	Finalist
2010	Rebecca Brown	American Romances	City Lights	Winner
	Joan Schenkar	The Talented Miss Highsmith	St. Martin’s Press	Finalist
	Mary Cappello	Called Back	Alyson Books	Finalist
2011	Barbara Hammer	Hammer!	The Feminist Press	Winner	[6]
	Emma Donoghue	Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature	Alfred A. Knopf	Finalist
	Terry Castle	The Professor and Other Writings	Harper/HarperCollins	Finalist
2012	Jeanne Córdova	When We Were Outlaws	Spinsters Ink	Winner
	Gayle S. Rubin	Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader	Duke University Press	Finalist
	Lisa L. Moore	Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes	University of Minnesota Press	Finalist
2013	Alison Bechdel	Are You My Mother?	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt	Winner	[7]
	Jeanette Winterson	Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal	Grove Press	Finalist
	Kate Bornstein	A Queer and Pleasant Danger	Beacon Press	Finalist
	Kelly Barth	My Almost Certainly Real Imaginary Jesus	Arktoi/Red Hen	Finalist
2014	Julia M. Allen	Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins	SUNY Press	Winner	[8][9]
	Donna Minkowitz	Growing Up Golem	Magnus Books/Riverdale Avenue	Finalist	[10]
	Jennifer Finney Boylan	Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders	Crown	Finalist	[10]
	Julia Serano	Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive	Seal Press	Finalist	[10]
2015	Barbara Smith; edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks	Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: 40 Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith	SUNY Press	Winner	[11]
	Ariel Gore	The End of Eve	Hawthorne Books	Finalist
	Daisy Hernandez	A Cup of Water Under My Bed	Beacon Press	Finalist
	Kelly Cogswell	Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger	University of Minnesota Press	Finalist
2016	Marcia Gallo	"No One Helped": Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy	Cornell University Press	Winner	[12]
	Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha	Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home	Arsenal Pulp Press	Finalist
	Lillian Faderman	The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle	Simon and Schuster	Finalist
	Maggie Thrash	Honor Girl	Candlewick Press	Finalist
2017	Sarah Schulman	Conflict Is Not Abuse	Arsenal Pulp Press	Winner	[13][14][15]
	Elizabeth M. Edman	Queer Virtue	Beacon Press	Finalist
	Emily K. Hobson	Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left	University of California Press	Finalist
2018	Rosalind Rosenberg	Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray	Oxford University Press	Winner	[16]
	Eileen Myles	Afterglow	Grove Press	Finalist
	Melissa Febos	Abandon Me	Bloomsbury USA	Finalist
	Myriam Gurba	Mean	Coffee House Press	Finalist
2019	Imani Perry	Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry	Beacon Press	Winner	[17]
	E. Patrick Johnson	Black, Queer, Southern, Women: An Oral History	University of North Carolina Press	Finalist	[18]
	Jaime Harker	The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement, and the Queer Literary Canon	University of North Carolina Press	Finalist	[18]
	Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha	Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice	Arsenal Pulp Press	Finalist	[18]
2020	Carmen Maria Machado	In the Dream House	Graywolf Press	Winner	[19][20]
	Saidiya Hartman	Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments	W. W. Norton	Winner	[19][20]
	Benjamin Moser	Sontag: Her Life and Work	Ecco	Finalist	[21]
	Samra Habib	We Have Always Been Here	Viking / Penguin Canada	Finalist	[21]
2021	Jenn Shapland	My Autobiography of Carson McCullers	Tin House	Winner	[22][23]
	Hilary Holladay	The Power of Adrienne Rich	Nan A. Talese/Doubleday	Finalist
	Julie Marie Wade	Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing	Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press	Finalist
	Tana Wojczuk	Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity	Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster	Finalist
2022	Briona Simone Jones (ed.)	Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought	The New Press	Winner	[24]
	Alison Bechdel	The Secret to Superhuman Strength	Mariner	Finalist
	Jackie Kay	Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography	Vintage	Finalist
	Lauren Hough	Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing	Vintage	Finalist
2023	Raquel Gutierrez	Brown Neon	Coffee House Press	Winner	[25][26]
	Leslie Absher	Spy Daughter, Queer Girl: In Search of Truth and Acceptance in a Family of Secrets	Latah Books	Finalist
	MB Cashetta	A Cheerleader’s Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment	Engine Books	Finalist
	Wendy L. Rouse	Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement	NYU Press	Finalist
2024	Barbara Jane Brickman	Suffering Sappho!: Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture	Rutgers University Press	Winner	[27][28]
	Cookie Woolner	The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire Before Stonewall	University of North Carolina Press	Finalist	[29]
	Lamya H	Hijab Butch Blues	Dial Press	Finalist	[29]
	A.V. Marraccini	We the Parasites	Sublunary Editions	Finalist	[29]
2025	Sandra Gail Lambert	My Withered Legs and Other Essays	University of Georgia Press	Finalist	[30]
	June Thomas	A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces that Shaped Queer Women’s Culture	Seal Press Hatchett Book Group	Finalist	[30]
	Sarah Leavitt	Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love	Arsenal Pulp Press	Finalist	[30]
	Alexis Pauline Gumbs	Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	Finalist	[30]