Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Publishing Triangle’s 20th Annual Triangle Awards Finalists


The Publishing Triangle’s 20th Annual Triangle Awards Will Be Presented April 28
 
Katherine V. Forrest Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
 
Finalists Announced for Best Lesbian and Gay Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Debut Fiction Published in 2007
 
 
The 20th Annual Triangle Awards, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in 2007, will be presented on April 28 at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.
 
The Publishing Triangle, the association of lesbians and gay men in publishing, began honoring a gay or lesbian writer for his or her body of work a few months after the organization was founded in 1989, and has now partnered with the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards to present an impressive array of awards each spring.
 
Katherine V. Forrest is the 2008 recipient of the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in honor of a legendary editor of the 1970s and 1980s. Forrest has written fifteen works of fiction, including her eight-volume Kate Delafield mystery series—the latest, Hancock Park (2004) won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Mystery, as did two of the earlier volumes in the series. In 2005, she won the Lambda for Science Fiction/Fantasy for Daughters of an Emerald Dusk. Forrest has worked for more two decades as a publisher as well—she was senior editor at Naiad Press for ten years and is currently supervising editor at Spinsters Ink—working with Jane Rule, Isabel Miller, and other notable lesbian and gay authors. She has also edited or co-edited numerous anthologies, including the recent Love, Castro Street. The Bill Whitehead Award is given to a woman in even-numbered years and a man in odd years, and the winner receives $3000.
 
The Publishing Triangle began giving the Shilts-Grahn awards for nonfiction in 1997. Each recipient receives $1000. The Judy Grahn Award honors the American writer, cultural theorist and activist (b. 1940) best known for The Common Woman (1969) and Another Mother Tongue (rev. ed., 1984). It recognizes the best nonfiction book of the year affecting lesbian lives--the book may be by a lesbian, for example, or about a lesbian or lesbian culture, or both.
 
Finalists for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Amy Hoffman, An Army of Ex-Lovers (University of Massachusetts Press)
Janet Malcolm, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (Yale University Press)
Sharon Marcus, Between Women (Princeton University Press)
 
The Randy Shilts Award honors the journalist whose groundbreaking work on the AIDS epidemic for the San Francisco Chronicle made him a hero to many in the community. Shilts (1951–1994) was the author of The Mayor of Castro Street, And the Band Played On, and Conduct Unbecoming.
 
Finalists for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (Alfred A. Knopf)
Michael Rowe, Other Men’s Sons (Cormorant Books)
Michael S. Sherry, Gay Artists in Modern American Culture (University of North Carolina Press)
 
The Publishing Triangle established its poetry awards in 2001. Each recipient receives $500. The Audre Lorde Award honors the American poet, essayist, librarian, and teacher. Lorde (1934–1992) was nominated for the National Book Award for From a Land Where Other People Live and was the poet laureate of New York State in 1991. She received the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement shortly before her death. Among her other sixteen books are Zami (1982) and A Burst of Light (1989).
 
Finalists for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Joan Larkin, My Body (Hanging Loose Press)
Eileen Myles, Sorry, Tree (Wave Books)
Jennifer Perrine, The Body Is No Machine (New Issues)
 
The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry honors the British poet Thom Gunn (1929–2004), who lived in San Francisco for much of his life. Gunn was the author of The Man with Night Sweats (1992) and many other acclaimed volumes. In its first four years, this award was known as the Triangle Award for Gay Poetry, and Mr. Gunn himself won the very first such award, in 2001, for his Boss Cupid.
 
Finalists for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Henri Cole, Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar Straus Giroux)
Steve Fellner, Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press)
Daniel Hall, Under Sleep (The University of Chicago Press)
 
The Publishing Triangle’s newest award, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, was first presented in 2006. This prize is named in honor of the esteemed novelist and man of letters, Edmund White—who won the very first Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1989. The Edmund White Award celebrates the future of lesbian and gay literature by awarding a prize to an outstanding first novel or story collection. The winner receives $1000.
 
Finalists for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
James Cañón, Tales from the Town of Widows (Harper Perennial)
Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season (Manic D Press)
Bob Smith, Selfish and Perverse (Carroll & Graf)
 
***
 
The Ferro-Grumley Awards for lesbian and gay fiction were established in 1988 to recognize, promote excellence in, and give greater access to fiction writing from lesbian and gay points of view. These awards honor the memory of authors Robert Ferro (The Blue Star, Second Son, etc.) and Michael Grumley (Life Drawing, etc.), life partners who died that year of AIDS within weeks of each other. One or two awards are given each year, entailing a cash honorarium or a residency at a prestigious arts colony. A new committee of judges is formed each year. Judges are selected from throughout the U.S. and Canada, from the arts, media, publishing, bookselling, and related fields.
 
Finalists for The Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction
André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Felicia Luna Lemus, Like Son (Akashic Books)
Ali Liebegott, The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf)
Brian Malloy, Brendan Wolf (St. Martin’s Press)
Armistead Maupin, Michael Tolliver Lives (HarperCollins)
Sarah Schulman, The Child (Carroll & Graf)


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations to the winners. Hope this award inspires the publishers for more excellence in their work.

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