Lambda Literary Award Finalists + 3 Passings

Among the finalists for the 2005 Lambda Literary Awards (alphabetical by category), I'm listing the following books and writers, whom I either know, in some cases very well, or have met over the years. I definitely wish all of them the best! (And in the case of Freedom in the Village, I actually have work in the anthology):

Anthology
Freedom in the Village: 25 Years of Black, Gay Men's Writing, ed. E. Lynn Harris (Carroll & Graf); Everything I Have is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men, ed. Wendell Ricketts (Suspect Thoughts); Bullets and Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry, ed. Emanuel Xavier (Suspect Thoughts)

Erotica
Best Lesbian Erotica 2006, ed. by Eileen Myles and Tristan Taormino (Cleis)

Gay Men's Poetry
School of the Arts by Mark Doty (HarperCollins); For Dust Thou Art by Timothy Liu

Lesbian Poetry
Where the Apple Falls by Samiya Bashir (redbone press); Directed by Desire: Collected Poems by June Jordan (Copper Canyon); Life Mask by Jackie Kay (Bloodaxe Books); Eye of Water by Amber Flora Thomas (Pittsburgh)

LGBT Studies
Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch by Dwight A. McBride (NYU Press)

Nonfiction
Beyond the Down Low by Keith Boykin (Carroll & Graf); Words to Our Now by Thomas Glave (Minnesota)

Romance
Walt Loves the Bearcat by Randy Boyd (West Beach Books)

Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror
Fledgling by Octavia Butler (Seven Stories) [very cool that she was nominated, though she said that she wasn't a lesbian]

Spirituality
Fumbling Toward Divinity by Craig Hickman (Annabessacook Farm)

Transgender/GenderQueer
In a Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam (NYU Press)

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Three more important predecessors and major figures passed away recently:

Yahoo! News: Photographer, filmmaker, novelist, and polymath Gordon Parks dies at 93

Yahoo! News: Malian bluesman Ali Farka Touré passes

New York Times: New York School poet Barbara Guest dies at 85