January 17th, 2008
by
Naamenblog
The Lambda Awards, affectionately termed The Lammys, are literary awards that celebrate the representation of LGBT folks in literature. The Lammys have revealed their long list of nominees, sorted by category, and their Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror section shows almost an even split between male and female authors (I say almost because some names on the list are, or at least seem to me, to be gender neutral so I don’t have a real count). I found this really interesting since some of the major F/SF awards all but ignored female authors last year *cough*Hugos*cough*.
Names I recognized on The Lammy’s list include, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear, Jo Walton & Laurie J. Marks and I’m sure my not recognizing some other names is just me being slow but it is also worthy to note that those are also the only authors nominated by larger publishing houses, Tor and Small Beer Press. Yes, it’s arguable whether we can call Small Beer a large publisher, as much as I love them. I would consider them more mid-range but I’m putting it here anyway because I do think they’re a recognizable name within F/SF circles. There are some smaller well known LGBT publishers on the list like Alyson Books as well but I can’t help but wonder if this disparity is because the larger publishers are simply not putting out any F/SF with LGBT characters or if they just didn’t submit anyone? And if it’s the latter did they not submit because they didn’t know of the Lammys, or forgot, or did they simply not want their authors getting press for winning an LGBT themed award?
Anyway, head over and check it out, finalists will be announced on March 15th.
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Filed under Awards & Recognition, FSF, News, Sexuality & queerness | Comments (3)
As discussed elsewhere, the Lammy judges do not get to see many books from the major publishers. This may be in part because the awards are not seen as prestigious enough, but the fact that you have to pay a fee to submit a book probably doesn’t help.
Yet further discussion suggests that even the Tiptree is having trouble getting books out of the major publishers this year.
Basically any award that relies on publishers submitting books is going to be hamstrung by the willingness, or lack thereof, of the publishers to participate.
As for the Hugos, you are going to nominate this year, aren’t you?
Cheryl-
I will be nominating some books for Hugos this year. Unfortunately I’m somewhat by the fact that I don’t always read a lot of recently published F/SF (within the last year) but I have at least three books that I will be nominating and I’m going to try and read more recently published stuff before nomination time rolls around.
The page says that authors can nominate their works as well, so can blame solely rest with the publishers?