African American Lammy Winners (1992)

Four African-American authors won in five categories during the [Fourth Annual] Lambda Literary Awards (Lammy) ceremony held on May 22 [1992] at the Anaheim (California) Hilton. It was the first time that many black writers had won since the annual awards began in 1989.

Jewelle Gomez--the only double-winner--tied in the Lesbian Fiction category with her vampire novel The Gilda Stories (Firebrand Books). The book also won in the Lesbian Science Fiction/Fantasy category. (Gomez, considered a mainstay at the awards, gave the keynote address at the first Lammys and delivered Audre Lorde's Whitehead Lecture when Lorde, a much celebrated poet/essayist, won the Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Lesbian and Gay Literature. The award is named for the late Bill Whitehead, who was an editor at Dutton.)

Brother to Brother (Alyson), edited by poet Essex Hephill, who took over the book after Joesph Beam, the original editor, died from AIDS, won the Gay Men's Anthology award.

For Gay Men's Poetry, the award went to editor/poet Assotto Saint's The Road Before Us (Galiens Press), which contains the work of 100 poets.

Melvin Dixon's second novel, Vanishing Rooms (Dutton), about a black gay dancer and his murdered white lover, won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Best Gay Male Fiction. The award comes with a one-thousand-dollar cash prize, and is sponsored by the Ferro-Grumley Foundation, named after the gay writers Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley. (Vanishing Rooms was also among the five nominees for the Gay Men's Fiction award.)

The Lammys ceremony took place on the eve of the American Booksellers Association convention.

Among the 75 judges for this year's awards, several were African American. They included writer Cary Alan Johnson (Philadelphia), poet Alan Miller (Oakland, California), and critic Nedhera Landers (Chicago).

This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (June 20, 1992).