April 24, 2014—The 26th annual Triangle Awards, honoring the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in 2013, were presented this evening at The Auditorium of the New School ( 66 West 12th Street, New York City ) at 7 p.m. Sponsored by Farrar Straus Giroux, St. Martin's Press, and Curtis Brown, Ltd., the ceremony was free and open to the public, with a reception afterward.
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.
For the first time in the Triangle Awards' history, a novel was awarded the top prize in two categories. If You Could be Mine, Sara Farizan's young-adult novel about a teenage lesbian in Iran who considers gender-reassignment surgery, was awarded both the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.
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The Ferro-Grumley Award for lesbian and gay fiction was established in 1988 to recognize, promote excellence in, and give greater access to fiction writing from lesbian and gay points of view. The award, which has widened to embrace bisexuals and the transgendered, honors the memory of authors Robert Ferro ( The Blue Star, Second Son ) and Michael Grumley ( Life Drawing ), life partners who died that year of AIDS, within weeks of each other. The winner receives an honorarium of $1000. Judges are selected from throughout the U.S. and Canada, from the arts, media, publishing, bookselling, and related fields. The award was presented by Stephen Greco, head of the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards, and Sarah Van Arsdale, a longtime board member.
Winner: If You Could Be Mine, by Sara Farizan ( Algonquin Young Readers )
Finalists for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
All This Talk of Love, by Christopher Castellani ( Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill )
Local Souls, by Allan Gurganus ( Liveright/W.W. Norton )
The Two Hotel Francforts, by David Leavitt ( Bloomsbury USA )
Where You Can Find Me, by Sheri Joseph ( Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press )
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The Publishing Triangle's newest literary award, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, was first presented in 2006. This prize, which highlights the Publishing Triangle's ongoing commitment to emerging LGBT talent, carries an honorarium of $1000. Charles Rice-Gonzalez, one of this year's judges, presented the prize.
Winner: If You Could Be Mine, by Sara Farizan ( Algonquin Young Readers )
Finalists for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
An Honest Ghost, by Rick Whitaker ( Jaded Ibis Press )
How to Shake the Other Man, by Derek Palacio ( Nouvella )
Letters Never Sent, by Sandra Moran ( Bedazzled Ink )
If You Could Be Mine, which was the first title published by the new imprint Algonquin Young Readers, is the first young-adult novel to receive the Edmund White Award.
The Publishing Triangle began giving the Shilts-Grahn awards for nonfiction in 1997. Each winner receives $1000. John Loughery, one of the nonfiction judges, and Kathleen Warnock presented these prizes.
The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction 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 by or about lesbians, bisexual women, and/or transwomen, or that has a significant influence upon the lives of queer women.
Winner: Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins, by Julia M. Allen ( SUNY Press )
Finalists for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, by Julia Serano ( Seal Press )
Growing Up Golem, by Donna Minkowitz ( Magnus Books/Riverdale Avenue Books )
Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan ( Crown )
The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction honors the journalist whose groundbreaking reporting 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. This award recognizes the best nonfiction book of the year by or about gay men, bisexual men, and/or transmen or that has a significant influence upon the lives of queer men.
Winner: White Girls, by Hilton Als ( McSweeney's )
Finalists for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Henry Darger: Throwaway Boy, by Jim Elledge ( Overlook )
Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boat Lift to Gay Cuban Miami, by Susana Peña ( University of Minnesota Press )
Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous Gender Creative Son, by Lori Duron ( Broadway Books/Crown )
The Publishing Triangle established its poetry awards in 2001. Eduardo C. Corral and Stephen S. Mills, two of this year's judges, presented these awards, which carry a prize of $500 apiece.
The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry honors the author of The Man with Night Sweats ( 1992 ), Boss Cupid ( 2000; the winner of the very first Triangle Award for Gay Male Poetry ), and other works. The British-born Gunn, a longtime resident of San Francisco, died in 2004, at the age of seventy-four. This award was renamed in his honor in 2005.
Winner: All the Heat We Could Carry, by Charlie Bondhus ( Main Street Rag )
Finalists for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Sacrilegion, by L. Lamar Wilson ( Carolina Wren Press )
The Talking Day, by Michael Klein ( Sibling Rivalry Press )
Unpeopled Eden, by Rigoberto GonzÃĦlez ( Four Way Books )
The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry 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 ).
Winner: Enchantée, by Angie Estes ( Oberlin College Press )
Finalists for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Butch Geography, by Stacey Waite ( Tupelo Press )
She Has a Name, by Kamilah Aisha Moon ( Four Way Books )
Swoop, by Hailey Leithauser ( Graywolf Press )
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MarÃa Irene Fornés is the 2014 recipient of the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in honor of the legendary editor of the 1970s and 1980s. Born in Cuba, Fornés is a pivotal figure in Hispanic-American, LGBT, and experimental theater, both for her unique vision as a writer and for her dedication as a director and teacher. She has written more than 40 stage works, including Tango Palace ( 1963 ), The Successful Life of 3 ( 1965 ), Promenade ( 1965 ), The Office ( 1966 ), A Vietnamese Wedding ( 1967 ), Molly's Dream ( 1968 ), Fefu and Her Friends ( 1977 ), Evelyn Brown ( 1980 ), The Danube ( 1981 ), Mud ( 1983 ), Sarita ( 1984 ), The Conduct of Life ( 1985 ), Abingdon Square ( 1987 ), and Letters From Cuba ( 2000 ). Fornés, who has directed classic dramas as well as many of her own plays, has had a long collaboration with INTAR at The Hispanic American Arts Center in New York City. She is the recipient of nine Village Voice Obie Awards for both playwriting and direction. Her play And What of the Night? ( 1989 ) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and Fornés has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Robert Chesley Award for LGBT theater. Her work continues to be performed around the world, both professionally and at many universities and colleges.
The Bill Whitehead Award is given to a woman in even-numbered years and to a man in odd years, and the winner receives $3000. The playwright and director Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas accepted the award on Fornés's behalf.
In addition, the Publishing Triangle presented its special Leadership Award to Sinister Wisdom magazine. Created in 2002, this award recognizes contributions to LGBT literature by those who are not primarily writers—editors, librarians, institutions, agents, and others. Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and art quarterly journal. Founded in 1976, the magazine works to create a multicultural, multi-class lesbian space. The journal also seeks to open, consider, and advance the exploration of lesbian community issues. In 2013, Sinister Wisdom moved into book publishing as well, in partnership with A Midsummer Night's Press. Its Sapphic Classics are reprint editions of iconic works of lesbian poetry. The first such title, Minnie Bruce Pratt's Crime Against Nature, was published in April 2013; the second Sapphic Classic, Cheryl Clarke's Living as a Lesbian, came out in January 2014. For its decades of publishing to a queer audience, Sinister Wisdom, the oldest surviving lesbian literary journal, is being honored with the Publishing Triangle's Leadership Award. Author and activist Cheryl Clarke, presented this award, which was accepted by the magazine's publisher, Julie R. Enszer.
