The Lammys Showcase The Best Of Queer Lit

Photography by Danielle Levitt

The finalists for the 26^th Annual Lambda Literary Awards have been announced and once again, the most brilliant queer books of the year have been tapped for awards. This year's Lammys are notable not only because of the record setting number of submissions, but also for the inclusion of long omitted Graphic Novel category.

Jumping right in, the Bisexual Fiction category is chock-a-block with great titles: The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novelby David Leavitt, My Education by Susan Choi, In His Secret Life by Mel Bossa, Hild: A Novel by Nicola Griffith, and Corona by Bushra Rehman are duking it out for the Lammy. Clive Davis' The Soundtrack of My Life is the standout title in the Bisexual Nonfiction category.

Necessary Errors by Caleb Crain and Luis Negron's Mundo Cruel: Stories are the big titles in the Gay General Fiction category, while Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate and We Are Water by Wally Lamb highlight the best of the Lesbian General Fiction race.

OUT 100 honoree Tom Bianchi's Fire Island Polaroid series is up for the LGBT Nonfiction Lammy for his Tom Bianchi: Fire Island Pines. Polaroids 1975-1983. Perhaps his biggest competition will be Hilton Als, whose White Girls was well received by critics.

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan leads the LGBT Children's/Young Adult category and Vivek J. Tiwary's The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story heads up the brand new LBGT Graphic Novel category.

The Gay Memoir/Biography race is tight but our picks are Tim Teeman's In Bed With Gore Vidal, Richard Rodriguez's Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography, David Margolick's Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns,Jim Elledge's Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist, and Alysia Abbott's Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father.

Nevada, a novel by Imogen Binnie, is up against Trish Salah's Wanting in Arabic, and Tiresias by novelist Devon Llywelyn Jones, for the Trasgender Ficion award.

For more on the Lambda Literary Awards check out their webpage.