Lambda Literary Awards 1993: Complete list of winners

The Lambda Literary Awards have long served as the most prestigious honors for LGBTQ literature, and the 1993 ceremony proved to be a particularly vibrant moment in queer publishing history. These annual awards, often searched as “Lambda Lit Awards” or “Lambdas,” recognize excellence across dozens of categories, from debut fiction to anthologies, and the 1993 winners showcased the remarkable diversity of voices emerging in the early nineties. This was a year when LGBTQ authors were claiming increasingly prominent space in mainstream literary culture, and the Lambda winners reflected that growing confidence and artistic ambition.

Randall Kenan’s Let the Dead Bury Their Dead took home the Gay Fiction prize, a collection of interconnected stories that announced Kenan as a major talent with a gift for weaving together African American history, Southern Gothic sensibility, and queer identity into something entirely his own. On the lesbian side, Judith Katz’s Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound earned recognition for its innovative narrative structure and exploration of Yiddish culture alongside lesbian experience—a combination that felt refreshingly specific and unapologetic. Both works signaled that LGBTQ fiction was moving beyond singular narratives toward the kind of literary complexity and cultural specificity that had long been the province of straight authors.

Below you’ll find the complete roster of 1993 Lambda Literary Award winners across all categories, a snapshot of a pivotal year in queer letters.

Gay Fiction

• Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan

Lesbian Fiction

• Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound by Judith Katz