The shortlists for the 32nd annual Lambda Literary Awards were announced on Tuesday, with Jacqueline Woodson, Ocean Vuong, Kristen Arnett, and Bryan Washington among the finalists.
The awards, affectionately known as the Lammys, are the country’s most prestigious literary prizes for LGBTQ authors. This year’s ceremony will be hosted by Bowen Yang, the comedian and breakout Saturday Night Live star.
Woodson and Arnett were both named finalists in the lesbian fiction category for Red at the Bone and Mostly Dead Things, respectively. Other authors nominated in the category were Nicole Dennis-Benn for Patsyand Kirkus Prize finalist Carolina De Robertis for Cantoras.
Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (also a Kirkus Prize finalist) and Washington’s Lot made the shortlist for the gay fiction category, along with others including De’Shawn Charles Winslow for In West Mills and Jean-Baptiste Del Amo for Animalia.
Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House was named a finalist in the LGTBQ nonfiction category, as were Cyrus Grace Dunham’s A Year Without a Name and Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer.
Other notable finalists included Marlon James for Black Leopard, Red Wolf (LGBTQ science fiction/fantasy/horror), Kirkus Prize winner Saeed Jones for How We Fight for Our Lives (gay memoir/biography) and T Fleischmann for Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through (transgender nonfiction).
The winners of the awards will be announced at a ceremony in New York on June 8.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
