Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir or Biography

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

Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography
Awarded for	Literary award
Sponsored by	Lambda Literary Foundation
Date	Annual
Website	lambdaliterary.org/awards/

Between 1994 and 2000, the award was given for gay biography/autobiography.^[2] From 2002–2006, there was no gay biography/autobiography category (and also no lesbian biography/autobiography category) but rather separate categories for biography and for autobiography/memoir. In 2007, the gay memoir/biography category was created (as was the lesbian memoir/biography category).^[2]

Recipients

List of Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography Recipients

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1994	Edmund White	Genet	Winner	[3]
	Brad Gooch	City Poet:The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara	Finalist	[3]
	Lars Eighner	Travels With Lizbeth
	Reinaldo Arenas	Before Night Falls
	James Broughton	Coming Unbuttoned
1995	Abraham Verghese	My Own Country	Winner	[4]
	Ned Rorem	Knowing When to Stop	Finalist	[4]
	Lawrence Mass	Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite
	Paul Monette	Last Watch of the Night
	John Preston	My Life as a Pornographer
1996	Lyle Leverich	Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams	Winner	[5]
	Bill T. Jones with Peggy Gillespie	Last Night on Earth	Finalist	[5]
	Gore Vidal	Palimpsest
	Edmund White	Our Paris
	Leroy Aarons	Prayers for Bobby
1997	Fenton Johnson	Geography of the Heart	Winner	[6]
	David Hajdu	Lush Life	Finalist	[6]
	Assotto Saint	Spells of a Voodoo Doll
	Bernard Cooper	Truth Serum
	Mark Doty	Heaven’s Coast
1998	Rafael Campo	The Poetry of Healing	Winner	[7]
	Gary Schmidgall	Walt Whitman: a Gay Life	Finalist	[7]
	Felice Picano	A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay
	Michael Klein	Track Conditions
	Mark Thompson	Gay Body: a Journey Through Shadow to Self
1999	William J. Mann	Wisecracker	Winner	[8]
	Gavin Geoffrey Dillard	In The Flesh	Finalist	[8]
	Norman Page	Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years
	Andrew Tobias	The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up
	Graham Caveney	Gentleman Junkie: The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs
2000	Jesse Green	The Velveteen Father	Winner	[9]
	Gad Beck	An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin	Finalist	[9]
	Mark Doty	Firebird: A Memoir
	Fred Kaplan	Gore Vidal
	Martin Duberman	Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion
2001	Douglas Murray	Bosie	Winner	[10]
	Jean-Yves Tadie	Marcel Proust	Finalist	[10]
	David Mixner	Brave Journeys
	Jay Quinn	The Mentor
	Ned Rorem	Lies
2007	Bernard Cooper	The Bill From My Father	Winner	[11]
	Alan Bennett	Untold Stories	Finalist	[11]
	Jonathan Silin	My Father’s Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents
	Kim Powers	History of Swimming
	Patrick Moore	Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir
2008	Kevin Sessums	Mississippi Sissy	Winner	[12][13]
	Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz	What Becomes You	Finalist	[13]
	Kenny Fries	The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory
	Mark Doty	Dog Years
	Martin Duberman	The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein
	Thom Bierdz	Forgiving Troy
2009	Sheila Rowbotham	Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love	Winner	[14]
	Aaron Cooper	Bringing Him Home	Finalist	[14]
	Aaron Shurin	King of Shadows
	Bob Morris	Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad
	Joel Derfner	Swish
2010	Reynolds Price	Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back	Winner	[15]
	David Plante	The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief	Finalist	[15]
	Douglas A. Martin	Once You Go Back
	Edmund White	City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960’s and 70’s
	Jon Ginoli	Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division
2011	Justin Spring	Secret Historian	Winner	[16]
	Bryan Batt	She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother	Finalist	[17]
	Gale Chester Whittington	Beyond Normal: The Birth of Gay Pride
	R. Tripp Evans	Grant Wood: A Life
	Selina Hastings	The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
2012	Glen Retief	The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood	Winner	[18]
	Charles Silverstein	For the Ferryman: A Personal History	Finalist
	Michael Schiavi	Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo
	Ryan Van Meter	If You Knew Then What I Know Now
	William E. Jones	Halsted Plays Himself
2013	Cynthia Carr	Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz	Winner	[19]
	Charles Rowan Beye	My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man’s Odyssey	Finalist	[19]
	Kamal Al-Solaylee	Intolerable
	Mutsuo Takahashi with Jeffrey Angles (trans.)	Twelve Views from the Distance
	Reynolds Price	Midstream: An Unfinished Memoir
	Ron Padgett (editor)	The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard
2014	Jerry Rosco (editor)	A Heaven of Words	Winner	[20][21]
	Alysia Abbott	Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father	Finalist	[20]
	Blake Bailey	Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson
	David Margolick	Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns
	Didier Eribon	Returning to Reims
	Hilary Holladay	American Hipster
	Jim Elledge	Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist
	Perry N. Halkitis	The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience
	Richard Rodriguez	Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography
	Tim Teeman	In Bed With Gore Vidal
2015	John Lahr	Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh	Winner (tie)	[22]
	Richard Blanco	The Prince of Los Cocuyos
	Alain Mabanckou with Sara Meli Ansari (trans.)	Letter to Jimmy	Finalist	[23]
	Brent Phillips	Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance
	Edmund White	Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris
	Philip Gefter	Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe
	Rob Smith	Closets, Combat and Coming Out
	Sean Strub	Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival
2016	Langdon Hammer	James Merrill: Life and Art	Winner	[24]
	Arsham Parsi and Marc Colbourne	Exiled for Love: The Journey of an Iranian Queer Activist	Finalist	[25]
	Bernard Cooper	My Avant-Garde Education: A Memoir
	Brad Gooch	Smash Cut
	Jameson Currier	Until My Heart Stops
	Jean Findlay	Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator
	Matthew Spender	A House in St. John’s Wood
	Michael V. Smith	My Body Is Yours
2017	Cleve Jones	When We Rise	Winner	[26]
	Augusten Burroughs	Lust & Wonder	Finalist	[27]
	Brian Blanchfield	Proxies
	Frederic Spotts	Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann
	Garrard Conley	Boy Erased: A Memoir
	Joseph Osmundson	Capsid: A Love Song
	Michael Schreiber	One Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin
	Will Schwalbe	Books For Living
2018	Chiké Frankie Edozien	Lives of Great Men	Winner	[28][29]
	Alan Bennett	Keeping On Keeping On	Finalist	[30]
	Bill Goldstein	The World Broke in Two
	Casey Gerald	There Will Be No Miracles Here
	Jonathan Alexander	Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology
	José Antonio Rodríguez	House Built on Ashes
	Kenny Fries	In the Province of the Gods
	Parvez Sharma	A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance
	Victor Corona	Night Class
2019	Darnell L. Moore	No Ashes in the Fire	Winner	[31]
	Alexander Chee	How to Write an Autobiographical Novel	Finalist	[32]
	Deray Mckesson	On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope
	Edmund White	The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
	Jeffrey C. Stewart	The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
	Jerry Torre and Tony Maietta	The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens
	Lillian Faderman	Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death
2020	Saeed Jones	How We Fight for Our Lives	Winner	[33][34]
	Alvin Orloff	DISASTERAMA! Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997	Finalist	[35][36]
	Chris Rush	The Light Years
	Guy Hocquenghem with Max Fox (trans.)	The Amphitheater of the Dead
	Isaac Mizrahi	I.M.
	James Oseland	Jimmy Neurosis
	Joseph Caldwell	In the Shadow of the Bridge
	Siddharth Dube	An Indefinite Sentence
2021	Mohsin Zaidi	A Dutiful Boy	Winner	[37][38][39]
	Billy-Ray Belcourt	A History of My Brief Body	Finalist	[40]
	François S. Clemmons	Officer Clemmons: A Memoir
	John Birdsall	The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard
	R. Eric Thomas	Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America
2022	Brian Broome	Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir	Winner	[41][42]
	Rajiv Mohabir	Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir	Finalist	[43]
	John Paul Brammer	Hola Papi
	Peter Staley	Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism
	Luis Felipe Fabre with JD Pluecker (trans.)	Writing with Caca / Escribir con Caca
2023	Edgar Gomez	High-Risk Homosexual	Winner	[44]
	Seán Hewitt	All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir	Finalist	[45]
	Jim Elledge	An Angel in Sodom
	Ron Goldberg	Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York
	Jesse Leon	I’m Not Broken
2024	Jason Yamas	Tweakerworld	Winner	[46]
	Charles Busch	Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy	Finalist	[47]
	Greg Marshall	Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It
	Jedidiah Jenkins	Mother, Nature
	Martin Duberman	Reaching Ninety