African American Lammy Winners (1994)

Two African-American books won a Lambda Literary Award (Lammy) at the banquet held recently [1994] at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

The awards banquet, sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based publication, Lambda Book report, coincided with the American Booksellers Association's convention.

Altogether there were six African-American books nominated in five categories.

Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS, an anthology published by other Countries Press and edited by B. Michael Hunter, shared the Lesbian and Gay Small Press award with the novel Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (Firebrand).

The late Audre Lorde's Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance won in the Lesbian Poetry category.

The other black books nominated were: Fragments That Remain by Steven Corbin (Gay Men's Fiction), Experimental Love Poetry by Cheryl Clarke (Lesbian Poetry), Tranquil Lake of Love by Carl Cook (Gay Men's Poetry), and Forty-Three Septembers by Jewelle Gomez (Lesbian Biography/Autobiography).

Randall Kenan, last year's recipient of a Lammy (Gay Men's Fiction) for his short-story collection, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, won Quality Paperback Book Club's $5,000 New Voices Award for Notable New Fiction.  QPB called the book "a masterpiece from a writer who seems destined to produce many more.

This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (July 30, 1994).