| Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography | |
| Awarded For: | Literary award |
| Sponsor: | Lambda Literary Foundation |
| Date: | Annual |
The Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award established in 1994, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about lesbians. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.[1]
| Author | Work | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Marguerite Yourcenar | Winner | [2] | |
| Family Values | Finalist | |||
| Forty-Three Septembers | ||||
| (editor) | How Am I To Be Heard: Letters of Lillian Smith | |||
| Mary Renault | ||||
| 1995 | (editor) | Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures | Winner | [3] |
| Memoir of a Race Traitor | Finalist | |||
| One Art: Letters | ||||
| Colonel and Chris Fisher | Serving in Silence | |||
| The Power and the Passion of M. Carey Thomas | ||||
| 1996 | Aimee & Jaguar | Winner | [4] | |
| and Joyce Murdoch | And Say Hi to Joyce | Finalist | ||
| Babe | ||||
| with Hannah Ashley | Eight Bullets | |||
| Two or Three Things I Know for Sure | ||||
| 1997 | Life in a Day | Winner | [5] | |
| Accidental Activist | Finalist | |||
| Coming Home to America | ||||
| Eva Le Gallienne | ||||
| The White Blackbird | ||||
| 1998 | Blue Windows: a Christian Science Childhood | Winner | [6] | |
| May Sarton: a Biography | Finalist | |||
| My Life as a Boy | ||||
| and Jane Meredith Adams | The Last Time I Wore a Dress | |||
| Virginia Woolf | ||||
| 1999 | The Indelible Alison Bechdel; Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out for | Winner | [7] | |
| A Fragile Union | Finalist | |||
| Empty Without You | ||||
| Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John | ||||
| The Queen of Whale Cay | ||||
| 2000 | The Trials of Radclyffe Hall | Winner | [8] | |
| Baby Precious Always Shines | Finalist | |||
| Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2: 1933–1938 | ||||
| My Lesbian Husband | ||||
| Tales of the Lavender Menace | ||||
| 2001 | Lifesaving | Winner | [9] | |
| My Dangerous Desires | Finalist | |||
| Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood | ||||
| The Room Lit by Roses | ||||
| Truly Wilde | ||||
| 2007 | Fun Home | Winner | [10] | |
| Incognito Street | Finalist | |||
| Intimate Politics | ||||
| Queen of the Oddballs | ||||
| Hit by a Farm | ||||
| 2008 | And Now We Are Going to Have a Party | Winner | [11] [12] | |
| Comfort Food for Breakups | Finalist | |||
| An Army of Ex-Lovers | ||||
| Two Lives: Gertrude & Alice | ||||
| Waiting for the Call | ||||
| 2009 | Sex Talks to Girls: A Memoir | Winner | [13] | |
| Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy | Finalist | |||
| Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) | ||||
| Sex Variant Woman | ||||
| Case of a Lifetime | ||||
| 2010 | The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith | Winner | [14] | |
| My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement | Finalist | |||
| Likewise: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag | ||||
| Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life | ||||
| Mean Little deaf Queer | ||||
| 2011 | Hammer!: Making Movies Out of Sex and Life | Winner (tie) | [15] | |
| Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures | ||||
| Blood Strangers: A Memoir | Finalist | [16] | ||
| She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood | ||||
| 2012 | When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution | Winner | [17] | |
| How to Get a Girl Pregnant | Finalist | |||
| Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet | ||||
| Small Fires: Essays | [18] | |||
| Taking My Life | ||||
| 2013 | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | Winner | [19] [20] | |
| A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet | Finalist | |||
| All We Know: Three Lives | ||||
| Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama | ||||
| Before the Rain | ||||
| The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination | ||||
| 2014 | Body Geographic | Winner | [21] [22] | |
| Growing up Golem | Finalist | |||
| L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir | ||||
| and Wendy MacNaughton | Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology | |||
| 2015 | and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith | Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith | Winner | [23] |
| Cease – a memoir of love, loss and desire | Finalist | [24] | ||
| Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger | ||||
| The End of Eve | ||||
| Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America | ||||
| 2016 | Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear | Winner | [25] [26] [27] | |
| Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef’s Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness | Finalist | [28] | ||
| Dirty River | ||||
| Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl | ||||
| You’re Not Edith | ||||
| 2017 | ody, Undone: Living On After Great Pain | Winner | [29] | |
| A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder | Finalist | |||
| I’m Just a Person | ||||
| Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier | ||||
| 2018 | The Fact of a Body | Winner | [30] [31] | |
| Abandon Me: Memoirs | Finalist | [32] | ||
| Afterglow | ||||
| Kiss Me Again, Paris: A Memoir | ||||
| The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris | ||||
| 2019 | Chronology | Winner | [33] | |
| Apocalypse, Darling | Finalist | [34] | ||
| Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography | ||||
| A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir | ||||
| Food Was Her Country: The Memoir of a Queer Daughter | ||||
| MINE: Essays | ||||
| My Butch Career: A Memoir | ||||
| nîtisânak | ||||
| 2020 | We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir | Winner | [35] [36] | |
| Finalist | [37] [38] | |||
| Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval | ||||
| with Joshua Lyon | A Wild and Precious Life | |||
| Ordinary Girls | ||||
| The Rib Joint: A Memoir In Essays | ||||
| Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls | ||||
| Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing | ||||
| 2021 | My Autobiography of Carson McCullers | Winner | [39] [40] [41] | |
| And The Walls Come Crumbling Down | Finalist | [42] | ||
| Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity | ||||
| Practicing for Love: A Memoir | ||||
| The Change: My Great American, Postindustrial, Midlife Crisis Tour | ||||
| 2022 | The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had) | Winner | [43] [44] | |
| The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture | Finalist | [45] | ||
| The Audacity of a Kiss: Love, Art, and Liberation | ||||
| The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams | ||||
| Why Labelle Matters | ||||
| 2023 | Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness | Winner | [46] | |
| Brown Neon | Finalist | [47] | ||
| Ma and Me | ||||
| Pretty Baby: A Memoir | ||||
| Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place | ||||
| 2024 | Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives | Winner | [48] | |
| Lamya H | Hijab Butch Blues | Finalist | [49] | |
| Vi Khi Nao | Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche | |||
| To Name the Bigger Lie | ||||
| Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters |