# Lambda Literary Foundation Founded in **1989** by Deacon Maccubbin (founder of Washington, D.C.'s Lambda Rising bookstore) as a **literary-foundation infrastructure for LGBTQ writing** — distinct from [[Lambda Legal]], which is a separate legal-rights organization (the two share the lambda symbol but no organizational relationship). Lambda Literary is the **dominant American institutional supporter of LGBTQ literature** through awards, fellowships, residencies, and emerging-writer programs. ## Core Programs - **The Lambda Literary Awards ("the Lammys")** — annual awards across 24+ categories of LGBTQ writing (lesbian fiction, gay fiction, transgender fiction, bisexual fiction, LGBTQ poetry, LGBTQ memoir, LGBTQ children's/YA, etc.). The Lammys have been awarded annually since 1989 and are the **most-cited recognition system for American LGBTQ writing** - **The Lambda Literary Writers Retreat** — annual emerging-writers residency, established 2007. The Retreat has produced cohorts of writers who have gone on to become significant figures in contemporary American LGBTQ literature (Saeed Jones, Carmen Maria Machado, Roxane Gay, and many others passed through the Retreat in earlier career stages) - **The *Lambda Literary Review*** — quarterly online publication of reviews, interviews, and essays on LGBTQ literature - **Writers in Schools** and other educational programs supporting LGBTQ-writer presence in K-12 and university curricula ## Notable Past Winners The Lammy roll includes essentially every major American LGBTQ writer of the past 35 years. Past winners include: - [[Audre Lorde]] (multiple posthumous and lifetime-achievement recognitions) - [[James Baldwin]] (posthumous recognitions) - [[Sarah Schulman]] (multiple winner in fiction and nonfiction) - [[Leslie Feinberg]] (1994 Stonewall Book Award and Lammy for *Stone Butch Blues*) - [[Tony Kushner]], Cheryl Clarke, Dorothy Allison, [[Edmund White]], [[Larry Kramer]], Jeanette Winterson, Alison Bechdel, Rita Mae Brown, and hundreds of others ## Place in the Vault Lambda Literary is the **cultural-infrastructure organization** of the broader [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] — the equivalent for LGBTQ literature of what the PEN America awards are for free-speech-aligned literature broadly. Its sustained operation since 1989 has produced a continuous record of LGBTQ literary recognition that is now one of the most-cited sources for what constitutes the canon of contemporary American LGBTQ writing. The contemporary 2022-onward book-banning wave has made the Lambda Literary award-list one of the most-targeted recommendation lists for state and school-district book-removal campaigns — the awards themselves becoming a flashpoint in the culture-war politics of LGBTQ-affirming literature in K-12 settings. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Lambda Legal]] — separate organization with same symbol