Publishing Triangle Announces 2021 Finalists, Special Awards Winners

Mar 22, 2021

The Publishing Triangle has announced 29 finalists for the 33rd annual Triangle Awards, which honor the best LGBTQ books published in 2020. It has also named recipients of three special awards. Winners in the seven competitive categories will be announced virtually on Wednesday, May 12.

Cheryl Clarke is the 2021 recipient of the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. Robert Fieseler is the winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, a prize honoring an LGBTQ writer who has published at least one book but not more than two. Fieseler will receive a prize of $1,500 with the award. William Johnson is the winner of the Publishing Triangle Leadership Award, which recognizes contributions to LGBTQ literature by those who are not primarily writers, such as editors, agents, librarians, and institutions. Johnson will receive $500 with this award.

Finalists for the competitive category awards are as follows:

The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing, by Julie Marie Wade (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press)
Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity, by Tana Wojczuk (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, by Jenn Shapland (Tin House)
The Power of Adrienne Rich, by Hilary Holladay (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, by Eric Cervini (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Figure It Out, by Wayne Koestenbaum (Soft Skull Press)
The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard, by John Birdsall (W. W. Norton)
Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey Through the AIDS Crisis, by Ross A. Slotten (University of Chicago Press)

The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry

Devil’s Lake, by Sarah M. Sala (Tolsun Books)
Here Is the Sweet Hand, by Francine J. Harris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Indigo, by Ellen Bass (Copper Canyon Press)
Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz (Graywolf Press)

The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry

Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount (Four Way Books)
Homie, by Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)
Pricks in the Tapestry, by Jameson Fitzpatrick (Birds, LLC)
The 13th Balloon, by Mark Bibbins (Copper Canyon Press)

The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

After Elias, by Eddy Boudel Tan (Dundurn Press)
The Contradictions, Sophie Yanow (Drawn and Quarterly)
99 Erics: A Kat Cataclysm Faux Novel, by Julia Serano (Switch Hitter Press)
Real Life, by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead)

The Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature

The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead)
My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, by S. Brook Corfman (Fordham University Press)
Trans Care, by Hil Malatino (University of Minnesota Press)
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel (Nightboat Books)

The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction

The Appointment, by Katharina Volckmer (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
Apsara Engine, by Bishakh Som (Feminist Press)
Fiebre Tropical, by Juliana Delgado Lopera (Feminist Press)
Memorial, by Bryan Washington (Riverhead)
Neotenica, by Joon Oluchi Lee (Nightboat Books)