Lambda Literary Awards 2020s: A decade of winners
The 2020s have been a remarkable period for Lambda Literary Awards, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honors celebrating LGBTQ+ writing across all genres. From 2020 through 2024, the awards have showcased an extraordinary range of voices navigating identity, desire, activism, and survival in real time. These five years coincided with a cultural moment of unprecedented visibility for queer literature, even as the community faced renewed political threats—and the Lambda winners reflect both the breadth of contemporary queer storytelling and its urgency. The awards themselves evolved during this span, consistently honoring not just fiction and memoir but essays, poetry, comics, and innovative hybrid forms that resist easy categorization.
Several winners emerged as bookend moments in the decade’s arc. Bryan Washington’s Lot won the 2020 Gay Fiction award and returned triumphantly with Family Meal in 2024, bookending the era with intimate explorations of Black queer life and kinship. Saeed Jones’s How We Fight for Our Lives, the acclaimed 2020 Gay Memoir/Biography winner, helped define the decade’s hunger for unapologetic queer memoir that grappled with racism and resilience. Meanwhile, the transgender fiction category revealed how queer literature was expanding beyond traditional narratives—from Zeyn Joukhadar’s The Thirty Names of Night (2021) to Miss Major’s oral history Miss Major Speaks (2024), the category embraced everything from speculative fiction to groundbreaking archival work.
What strikes most about this five-year snapshot is how consistently the Lambda Literary Awards centered the margins within the margins: Black queer voices, disabled queer writers, trans poets and memoirists, bisexual and gender-expansive storytellers who complicate singular identity narratives. The awards tracked a literary culture reckoning with its own complexities, moving beyond celebration toward critical examination and play. Below, you’ll find the complete roster of the 2020s Lambda Literary Awards winners—a record of a vibrant, contentious, generative moment in queer letters.
2020
Bisexual Literature
Exquisite Mariposa by Fiona Alison Duncan
Socialist Realism by Trisha Low
Pet Sounds by Stephanie Young
Gay Fiction
Lot by Bryan Washington
Gay Memoir/Biography
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
LGBTQ+ Comics
Lesbian Fiction
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib
Transgender Fiction
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante
We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma (editors)
HULL by Xandria Phillips
2021
Bisexual Literature
- You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
Wow, No Thank You.: Essays by Samantha Irby
Salt Body Shimmer by Aricka Foreman
Gay Fiction
Neotenica by Joon Oluchi Lee
Gay Memoir/Biography
A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi
LGBTQ+ Comics
Lesbian Fiction
Fiebre Tropical by Julián Delgado Lopera
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
Transgender Fiction
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
The Black Trans Prayer Book by J Mase IIIandLady Dane Figueroa Edidi- I Love You and I’m Not Dead by Sade LaNay
2022
Bisexual Literature
We Want What We Want by Alix Ohlin- Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Gumbo Ya Ya by Aurielle Marie
Gay Fiction
100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell
Gay Memoir/Biography
Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir by Brian Broome
LGBTQ+ Comics
Lesbian Fiction
Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had) by Sophie Santos
Transgender Fiction
Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun Harrison- Crossbones on My Life by Mason J
2023
Bisexual Literature
Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste
Appropriate Behavior by Maria San Filippo
Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes by Nicky Beer
Gay Fiction
- The Foghorn Echoes by Danny Ramadan
Gay Memoir/Biography
High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez
LGBTQ+ Comics
Lesbian Fiction
Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz
Transgender Fiction
The Call-Out by Cat Fitzpatrick
The Third Person by Emma Grove
MissSettl by Kamden Ishmael Hilliard
2024
Bisexual Literature
- Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
- Creep: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba
- Desire Museum by Danielle Cadena Deulen
Gay Fiction
- Family Meal by Bryan Washington
Gay Memoir/Biography
Tweakerworld by Jason Yamas
LGBTQ+ Comics
Lesbian Fiction
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
- Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives by Amelia Possanza
Transgender Fiction
- Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel
Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss MajorandToshio Meronek- Hood Vacations by Michal “MJ” Jones