| Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography | |
| Awarded For: | Literary award |
| Sponsor: | Lambda Literary Foundation |
| Date: | Annual |
The Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about gay men. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.[1]
Between 1994 and 2000, the award was given for gay biography/autobiography.[2] From 2002–2006 there was no gay biography/autobiography category (and also no lesbian biography/autobiography category) but rather separate categories for biography and for autobiography/memoir. In 2007 the gay memoir/autobiography category was created (as was the lesbian memoir/autobiography category).
| 1994 | Genet | Winner | [3] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City Poet:The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara | Finalist | |||
| Travels With Lizbeth | ||||
| Before Night Falls | ||||
| Coming Unbuttoned | ||||
| 1995 | My Own Country | Winner | [4] | |
| Knowing When to Stop | Finalist | |||
| Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite | ||||
| Last Watch of the Night | ||||
| My Life as a Pornographer | ||||
| 1996 | Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams | Winner | [5] | |
| with Peggy Gillespie | Last Night on Earth | Finalist | ||
| Palimpsest | ||||
| Our Paris | ||||
| Prayers for Bobby | ||||
| 1997 | Geography of the Heart | Winner | [6] | |
| Lush Life | Finalist | |||
| Spells of a Voodoo Doll | ||||
| Truth Serum | ||||
| Heaven’s Coast | ||||
| 1998 | The Poetry of Healing | Winner | [7] | |
| Walt Whitman: a Gay Life | Finalist | |||
| A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay | ||||
| Track Conditions | ||||
| Gay Body: a Journey Through Shadow to Self | ||||
| 1999 | Wisecracker | Winner | [8] | |
| In The Flesh | Finalist | |||
| Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years | ||||
| The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up | ||||
| Gentleman Junkie: The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs | ||||
| 2000 | The Velveteen Father | Winner | [9] | |
| An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin | Finalist | |||
| Firebird: A Memoir | ||||
| Gore Vidal | ||||
| Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion | ||||
| 2001 | Bosie | Winner | [10] | |
| Marcel Proust | Finalist | |||
| Brave Journeys | ||||
| The Mentor | ||||
| Lies | ||||
| 2007 | The Bill From My Father | Winner | [11] | |
| Untold Stories | Finalist | |||
| My Father’s Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents | ||||
| History of Swimming | ||||
| Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir | ||||
| 2008 | Mississippi Sissy | Winner | [12] [13] | |
| and Hilda Raz | What Becomes You | Finalist | ||
| The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory | ||||
| Dog Years | ||||
| The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein | ||||
| Forgiving Troy | ||||
| 2009 | Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love | Winner | [14] | |
| Bringing Him Home | Finalist | |||
| King of Shadows | ||||
| Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad | ||||
| Swish | ||||
| 2010 | Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back | Winner | [15] | |
| The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief | Finalist | |||
| Once You Go Back | ||||
| City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960’s and 70’s | ||||
| Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division | ||||
| 2011 | Secret Historian | Winner | [16] | |
| She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother | Finalist | [17] | ||
| Beyond Normal: The Birth of Gay Pride | ||||
| Grant Wood: A Life | ||||
| The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham | ||||
| 2012 | The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood | Winner | [18] | |
| For the Ferryman: A Personal History | Finalist | |||
| Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo | ||||
| If You Knew Then What I Know Now | ||||
| Halsted Plays Himself | ||||
| 2013 | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Winner | [19] | |
| My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man’s Odyssey | Finalist | |||
| Intolerable | ||||
| with Jeffrey Angles (trans.) | Twelve Views from the Distance | |||
| Midstream: An Unfinished Memoir | ||||
| (editor) | The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard | |||
| 2014 | (editor) | A Heaven of Words | Winner | [20] [21] |
| Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father | Finalist | |||
| Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson | ||||
| Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns | ||||
| Returning to Reims | ||||
| American Hipster | ||||
| Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist | ||||
| The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience | ||||
| Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography | ||||
| In Bed With Gore Vidal | ||||
| 2015 | Winner (tie) | [22] | ||
| The Prince of Los Cocuyos | ||||
| with Sara Meli Ansari (trans.) | Letter to Jimmy | Finalist | [23] | |
| Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance | ||||
| Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris | ||||
| Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe | ||||
| Closets, Combat and Coming Out | ||||
| Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival | ||||
| 2016 | James Merrill: Life and Art | Winner | [24] | |
| and Marc Colbourne | Exiled for Love: The Journey of an Iranian Queer Activist | Finalist | [25] | |
| My Avant-Garde Education: A Memoir | ||||
| Smash Cut | ||||
| Until My Heart Stops | ||||
| Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator | ||||
| A House in St. John’s Wood | ||||
| My Body Is Yours | ||||
| 2017 | When We Rise | Winner | [26] | |
| Lust & Wonder | Finalist | [27] | ||
| Proxies | ||||
| Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann | ||||
| Capsid: A Love Song | ||||
| One Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin | ||||
| Books For Living | ||||
| 2018 | Lives of Great Men | Winner | [28] [29] | |
| Keeping On Keeping On | Finalist | [30] | ||
| The World Broke in Two | ||||
| There Will Be No Miracles Here | ||||
| Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology | ||||
| House Built on Ashes | ||||
| In the Province of the Gods | ||||
| A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance | ||||
| Night Class | ||||
| 2019 | No Ashes in the Fire | Winner | [31] | |
| How to Write an Autobiographical Novel | Finalist | [32] | ||
| On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope | ||||
| The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading | ||||
| The New Negro The Life of Alain Locke | ||||
| and Tony Maietta | The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens | |||
| Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death | ||||
| 2020 | How We Fight for Our Lives | Winner | [33] [34] | |
| DISASTERAMA! Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997 | Finalist | [35] [36] | ||
| The Light Years | ||||
| with Max Fox (trans.) | The Amphitheater of the Dead | |||
| I.M. | ||||
| Jimmy Neurosis | ||||
| In the Shadow of the Bridge | ||||
| An Indefinite Sentence | ||||
| 2021 | A Dutiful Boy | Winner | [37] [38] [39] | |
| A History of My Brief Body | Finalist | [40] | ||
| Officer Clemmons: A Memoir | ||||
| The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard | ||||
| Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America | ||||
| 2022 | Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir | Winner | [41] [42] | |
| Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir | Finalist | [43] | ||
| Hola Papi | ||||
| Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism | ||||
| with JD Pluecker (trans.) | Writing with Caca / Escribir con Caca | |||
| 2023 | High-Risk Homosexual | Winner | [44] | |
| All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir | Finalist | [45] | ||
| Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York | ||||
| I’m Not Broken | ||||
| 2024 | Tweakerworld | Winner | [46] | |
| Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy | Finalist | [47] | ||
| Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It | ||||
| Mother, Nature | ||||
| Reaching Ninety |