Have the Lambda Book Awards Made Themselves Irrelevant?

The Coretta Scott King, Printz and Stonewall Book Awards

The Stonewall Books Awards, given annually to the year's best in children's and teen literature involving the GLBT experience, were announced today at the closing of the American Library Association's annual conference. Brian Katcher's Almost Perfect, the story of a straight boy's relationship with a transgender girl, was named the winner.

But the most interesting development may be this year's decision by the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards Committee of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Round Table, which gives the award, to announce it at the same time as the ALA's other prominent awards, which include the Newbery (given for outstanding children's literature), the Printz (given for outstanding teen literature), and the Coretta Scott King (given for outstanding African American literature).

This decision has greatly increased the visibility of the Stonewall Awards (and, perhaps, their clout), and some are saying this is a direct response to last year's decision by the Lambda Awards to restrict nominations only to books whose authors identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

At the time, I argued that this was very ill-conceived that the sexual orientation of an author was irrelevant to the quality of a book or the "truthfulness" of its voice, and that, for various reasons, this decision, however well-intentioned, was an unnecessary slap in the face of our strongly supportive straight-author allies.

My friend, heterosexual author Ellen Wittlinger, makes this case particularly effectively here.

I also argued it would inevitably reduce the quality of the Lambda winners and end up reducing the overall clout of the awards themselves, something the increased visibility of the Stonewall Awards may be hastening, at least with regard to teen and children's GLBT literature.

I hate to say I told you so, but I was at the ALA conference this weekend in San Diego, and I can report that the Lambda's recent policy change was unanimously considered a bad idea by everyone I talked to, gay and straight. In other words, within the children's book industry itself, the Lambda Awards are already less respected than they were a year ago.

Now with their increased prominence, the Stonewall Awards may already be replacing the Lambdas in significance. And having both won a Lambda Award and served on a judging committee, that makes me very sad.

In addition to the Stonewall Award winner, the Awards Committee also named four "Honor" books: will grayson, will grayson by John Green and David Levithan;  Love Drugged by James Klise; Freaks and Revelations by Davida Wills Hurwin; and The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams, illustrated by Quentin Blake.