Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography

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]

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

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	Alethia 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	Amelia Possanza	Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives	Winner	[48]
	Lamya H	Hijab Butch Blues	Finalist	[49]
	Vi Khi Nao	Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche
	Sarah Viren	To Name the Bigger Lie
	Lynnée Denise	Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters