Publishing Triangle Winners: Sara Farizan and Sara Farizan

             and   

Sara Farizan made history last night when, for the first time in the 26-year history of the Publishing Triangle Awards, she won both the Ferro-Grumley and the Debut Fiction prize for her novel If You Could Be Mine. Also, she arrived from the airport as her marketing director was accepting the debut award on her behalf.

The Ferro-Grumley Award: If You Could Be Mine [Kindle], Sara Farizan  

Debut Fiction: If You Could Be Mine [Kindle], Sara Farizan

Gay Nonfiction: White Girls, Hilton Als 

Lesbian Nonfiction: Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins, Julia M. Allen

Gay Poetry: All the Heat We Could Carry, Charlie Bondhus

Lesbian Poetry: Enchantée, Angie Estes

Lifetime Achievement: María Irene Fornés

Comments

[W. Stephen Breedlove]

GLBTQ literature needs all the recognition that it can get. But after looking at the Publishing Triangle Awards listed above, the current Lammy finalists, and the recent Stonewall Book Awards, I don't know how to regard them anymore. By giving Sara Farizan's novel two awards, the Publishing Triangle kept another book from being recognized. Why is a book allowed to be nominated in more than one category? You would think that a book that qualifies for Debut Fiction would not be put in competition for the Ferro-Grumley prize. Giving two prizes to the same novel seems "piggy." Then, as Band of Thebes remarked on the current Lammy Awards slate, "With their expanded shortlists of up to eleven titles in some categories, the Lammys now honor as a finalist one in every four books submitted for consideration. Generous but not rigorous. They are diluting their meaning." Also, the latest Stonewall Book Awards had ties for two of their three prizes. Couldn't the judges make up their minds about winners? OK, recognition to two more books, but then why not include another book in the Honor Book category in the two prizes so there would be four Honor Books, which the Stonewalls can have, instead of three? Anymore, these GLBTQ literary prizes seem to be overly kind or just plain stingy.