#lambda literary

The Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices is excited to present Resistance Zines, a virtual workshop open to any and all creatives in the greater Lambda community. 

In this 90 minute workshop, participants will learn about the historical role of zines in political movements, celebrate zines as a tool for building community, and explore the perzine (zines that feature the authors' subjectivity) as a form of resistance within the context of broader ant-ICE organizing. Participants can expect to have the time and space during the workshop to create their own zine as well as leave the workshop with the tools and knowledge needed to continue creating and distributing zines.

All creators will have the opportunity to contribute the zine that they make during the workshop to a digital archive housed on Lambda Literary’s website.

Today on the site we’re shining the spotlight on the 2024 finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Anthology! Anthologies are pretty near and dear to my heart, having edited five of them, and I’m thrilled to help showcase these editors, contributors, and volumes before the Lammy Awards take place on June 11th! 2 Trans 2 Furious: An Extremely Serious Journal of Transgender Street Racing…

Chef’s Choice was up for a Lammy this year and LOST! And I legitimately could not be happier.

I always think people are lying when they get all humble after something like this, but I am NOT lying, y’all. Genuinely, it was a thrill just to be short-listed for the Lambda Literary Awards.

If you haven’t gotten around to reading Chef’s Choice yet, please pick it up! Luna and Jean-Pierre will always hold a special place in my heart and, I’m told, the hearts of trans readers who saw something of themselves and their relationships in this book. Hooray for my sophomore romcom, the T4T fake dating foodie farce that got out into the world!

Today, I’m just basking in the fact that I was in a room with lots of queer talent with my hot wife on my arm. Truly wouldn’t believe it if you’d told me in 2021 this was my future.

I, for one, am going to buy a copy of the winner in the LGBTQ+ Erotica & Romance category, Laura Q’s A Tight Squeeze: Smutty Trans and Queer Stories. In my opinion, the correct book took home the award. Erotica has always been a cornerstone of queer literature and it makes my heart happy seeing it get its flowers. I definitely encourage you to check out the short list to see all the titles that were up for awards this year. What a slate! Although I’m still confused why the Lammys structure their categories the way they do. I find it really strange to have what is essentially a category for LGBTQ+ Erotica & BTQ+ Romance while the Big L and Big G are off doing their own thing in Romance categories, but maybe that’s just me. Anyhoo!

I was not expecting to win an award but I have anxiety so here is the acceptance speech I had in my pocket, reproduced with only slight editing for you.

I want to thank my wife, without whom none of my books would exist; my agent Larissa Melo Pienkowski; Dana, my first reader and lifelong friend; Lara Jones, my editor at Atria, and the entire Atria team. Any accolades this book receives is a reflection of their dedication to the bit. Having a trans love story celebrated in this moment is meaningful because this is a moment when politics and police and policies are coalescing around the idea that trans lives are worthless. That we are disposable. And it is a moment where those same or similar forces are saying Palestinian lives are worthless, are disposable. These two things, and many other injustices besides, are forever linked in my mind because there is no trans liberation, queer liberation, any liberation, until there is complete liberation. Trans rights now, and in the same breath, in the same moment, free, free Palestine.

This Pride I am asking you to please donate to Gaza Funds and do what you can to protest this genocide.

i've been quiet here for a bit, because for the last few weeks i've been prepping for and then attending the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices as a 2024 Fellow in the speculative fiction cohort!

(this is me reading from the first draft of a short story, part of the Fellows reading series that ended each workshop day. i think the recording is going up on Lambda's YouTube eventually!)

i've been sitting here all evening trying to figure out what to say about it. there are so many things i want to get across! like what a huge opportunity this was for me when, as a single queer still living mostly paycheck to paycheck, so many writing workshops are out of reach financially and in time commitment. and what an enormous privilege and relief it was to come into a space where no part of my identity and how it informs my writing would have to be painfully explained!

(i'm a fidgeter, so i started this blanket at the beginning of the week to help me focus, and this is where it stood yesterday! love having tangible evidence of time and thought well-spent)

also there's something truly beautiful about the minds of spec fic writers; gathering with my cohort every day, getting to read their work and hear their insights under the glorious leadership of @charliejaneanders, was one of the most energizing and genuinely brain-altering experiences i've ever had. i tried to take a rest and recovery weekend after the closing ceremony yesterday afternoon, but instead i had to send myself multiple emails from bed at 4 in the morning because my brain wouldn't stop whirring with thoughts about how to incorporate this piece of advice or that incisive question, and how to unstick myself from the brain muck i've felt mired in for months.

(the working version of the manuscript i workshopped, probably a novella, now with sections in the handy dandy outline for feedback from my cohort and from Charlie Jane. i don't outline plot really, but somehow i live by the Google Docs outline feature anyway)

The 2024 Lambda Literary award nominations came out yesterday, and these are some of my favorite books from the illustrious list of nominees.

Here's a picture of Meatball to imbue this post with a little extra luck: