Stonewall Book Awards: Ellis Avery, Keith Boykin

    

Three days after the Rainbow & Over the Rainbow Lists, two days after the Stonewall YA award, the adult Stonewall Book Awards were announced today:

FICTION: Ellis Avery's novel The Last Nude [Kindle] about an American woman's involvement wth the Russian painter Tamara de Lempika in Paris in 1927.

NON-FICTION: The anthology For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home [Kindle] edited by Keith Boykin

The Stonewall committee of the ALA's GLBT Round Table also named eight honor titles.

Fiction honor titles:

• Paul Russell, The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov winner of the Ferro-Grumley
• Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles winner of the Orange Prize
• John Boyne, The Absolutist
• Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Chulito

Non-Fiction honor titles:

• Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?
• Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
• Jeanne Cordova, When We Were Outlaws, Publishing Triangle & Lambda winner
• Christopher Bram, Eminent Outlaws

Many of these are excellent books -- especially the Avery, Russell, Winterson and Cordova -- and I'm grateful for the committee's hard work. Nevertheless, some huge omissions raise the perennial vexation of attracting the right submissions. When I judged a literary award and the best books were missing, we fought with the publicist, the director of publicity, and ultimately the publisher to wrangle additional nominations. After I criticized another award, the organizer responded they could only choose from what they had. Passive judging hurts everyone because it diminishes the award to merely the Finest Available rather than the Finest of the Year. LGBT writers deserve better, and interested readers deserve the best of the best.

Comments

[Lisa]

The best book I've read this year hasn't appeared on any of these lists : Songs for the New Depression. I don't know if it is because it doesn't have a big publisher behind it or what, but I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. Can't wait to read these, though!

[Sparking Blue]

Thank you to the Stonewall committee for another year of fantastic titles! A big thanks to the libraries who encourage and support their staff serving on the committee. The American Library Association has made a commitment to GLBT literature. And judging by the discussion these types of awards generate, the number of worthy titles is increasing - all good press whether you like a specific title or not. I am gonna go get my READ on!