# Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir or Biography

The Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about gay men. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.
Between 1994 and 2000, the award was given for gay biography/autobiography. From 2002–2006, there was no gay biography/autobiography category (and also no lesbian biography/autobiography category) but rather separate categories for biography and for autobiography/memoir. In 2007, the gay memoir/autobiography category was created (as was the lesbian memoir/autobiography category).

## Recipients

List of Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography Recipients :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1994 | Edmund White | Genet | Winner |
| 1994 | Brad Gooch | City Poet:The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara | Finalist |
| 1994 | Lars Eighner | Travels With Lizbeth | Finalist |
| 1994 | Reinaldo Arenas | Before Night Falls | Finalist |
| 1994 | James Broughton | Coming Unbuttoned | Finalist |
| 1995 | Abraham Verghese | My Own Country | Winner |
| 1995 | Ned Rorem | Knowing When to Stop | Finalist |
| 1995 | Lawrence Mass | Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite | Finalist |
| 1995 | Paul Monette | Last Watch of the Night | Finalist |
| 1995 | John Preston | My Life as a Pornographer | Finalist |
| 1996 | Lyle Leverich | Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams | Winner |
| 1996 | Bill T. Jones with Peggy Gillespie | Last Night on Earth | Finalist |
| 1996 | Gore Vidal | Palimpsest | Finalist |
| 1996 | Edmund White | Our Paris | Finalist |
| 1996 | Leroy Aarons | Prayers for Bobby | Finalist |
| 1997 | Fenton Johnson | Geography of the Heart | Winner |
| 1997 | David Hajdu | Lush Life | Finalist |
| 1997 | Assotto Saint | Spells of a Voodoo Doll | Finalist |
| 1997 | Bernard Cooper | Truth Serum | Finalist |
| 1997 | Mark Doty | Heaven’s Coast | Finalist |
| 1998 | Rafael Campo | The Poetry of Healing | Winner |
| 1998 | Gary Schmidgall | Walt Whitman: a Gay Life | Finalist |
| 1998 | Felice Picano | A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay | Finalist |
| 1998 | Michael Klein | Track Conditions | Finalist |
| 1998 | Mark Thompson | Gay Body: a Journey Through Shadow to Self | Finalist |
| 1999 | William J. Mann | Wisecracker | Winner |
| 1999 | Gavin Geoffrey Dillard | In The Flesh | Finalist |
| 1999 | Norman Page | Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years | Finalist |
| 1999 | Andrew Tobias | The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up | Finalist |
| 1999 | Graham Caveney | Gentleman Junkie: The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs | Finalist |
| 2000 | Jesse Green | The Velveteen Father | Winner |
| 2000 | Gad Beck | An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin | Finalist |
| 2000 | Mark Doty | Firebird: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2000 | Fred Kaplan | Gore Vidal | Finalist |
| 2000 | Martin Duberman | Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion | Finalist |
| 2001 | Douglas Murray | Bosie | Winner |
| 2001 | Jean-Yves Tadie | Marcel Proust | Finalist |
| 2001 | David Mixner | Brave Journeys | Finalist |
| 2001 | Jay Quinn | The Mentor | Finalist |
| 2001 | Ned Rorem | Lies | Finalist |
| 2007 | Bernard Cooper | The Bill From My Father | Winner |
| 2007 | Alan Bennett | Untold Stories | Finalist |
| 2007 | Jonathan Silin | My Father’s Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents | Finalist |
| 2007 | Kim Powers | History of Swimming | Finalist |
| 2007 | Patrick Moore | Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir | Finalist |
| 2008 | Kevin Sessums | Mississippi Sissy | Winner |
| 2008 | Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz | What Becomes You | Finalist |
| 2008 | Kenny Fries | The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory | Finalist |
| 2008 | Mark Doty | Dog Years | Finalist |
| 2008 | Martin Duberman | The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein | Finalist |
| 2008 | Thom Bierdz | Forgiving Troy | Finalist |
| 2009 | Sheila Rowbotham | Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love | Winner |
| 2009 | Aaron Cooper | Bringing Him Home | Finalist |
| 2009 | Aaron Shurin | King of Shadows | Finalist |
| 2009 | Bob Morris | Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad | Finalist |
| 2009 | Joel Derfner | Swish | Finalist |
| 2010 | Reynolds Price | Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back | Winner |
| 2010 | David Plante | The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief | Finalist |
| 2010 | Douglas A. Martin | Once You Go Back | Finalist |
| 2010 | Edmund White | City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960’s and 70’s | Finalist |
| 2010 | Jon Ginoli | Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division | Finalist |
| 2011 | Justin Spring | Secret Historian | Winner |
| 2011 | Bryan Batt | She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother | Finalist |
| 2011 | Gale Chester Whittington | Beyond Normal: The Birth of Gay Pride | Finalist |
| 2011 | R. Tripp Evans | Grant Wood: A Life | Finalist |
| 2011 | Selina Hastings | The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham | Finalist |
| 2012 | Glen Retief | The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood | Winner |
| 2012 | Charles Silverstein | For the Ferryman: A Personal History | Finalist |
| 2012 | Michael Schiavi | Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo | Finalist |
| 2012 | Ryan Van Meter | If You Knew Then What I Know Now | Finalist |
| 2012 | William E. Jones | Halsted Plays Himself | Finalist |
| 2013 | Cynthia Carr | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Winner |
| 2013 | Charles Rowan Beye | My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man’s Odyssey | Finalist |
| 2013 | Kamal Al-Solaylee | Intolerable | Finalist |
| 2013 | Mutsuo Takahashi with Jeffrey Angles (trans.) | Twelve Views from the Distance | Finalist |
| 2013 | Reynolds Price | Midstream: An Unfinished Memoir | Finalist |
| 2013 | Ron Padgett (editor) | The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jerry Rosco (editor) | A Heaven of Words | Winner |
| 2014 | Alysia Abbott | Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father | Finalist |
| 2014 | Blake Bailey | Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson | Finalist |
| 2014 | David Margolick | Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns | Finalist |
| 2014 | Didier Eribon | Returning to Reims | Finalist |
| 2014 | Hilary Holladay | American Hipster | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jim Elledge | Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist | Finalist |
| 2014 | Perry N. Halkitis | The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience | Finalist |
| 2014 | Richard Rodriguez | Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography | Finalist |
| 2014 | Tim Teeman | In Bed With Gore Vidal | Finalist |
| 2015 | John Lahr | Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh | Winner (tie) |
| 2015 | Richard Blanco | The Prince of Los Cocuyos | Winner (tie) |
| 2015 | Alain Mabanckou with Sara Meli Ansari (trans.) | Letter to Jimmy | Finalist |
| 2015 | Brent Phillips | Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance | Finalist |
| 2015 | Edmund White | Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris | Finalist |
| 2015 | Philip Gefter | Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe | Finalist |
| 2015 | Rob Smith | Closets, Combat and Coming Out | Finalist |
| 2015 | Sean Strub | Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival | Finalist |
| 2016 | Langdon Hammer | James Merrill: Life and Art | Winner |
| 2016 | Arsham Parsi and Marc Colbourne | Exiled for Love: The Journey of an Iranian Queer Activist | Finalist |
| 2016 | Bernard Cooper | My Avant-Garde Education: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2016 | Brad Gooch | Smash Cut | Finalist |
| 2016 | Jameson Currier | Until My Heart Stops | Finalist |
| 2016 | Jean Findlay | Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator | Finalist |
| 2016 | Matthew Spender | A House in St. John’s Wood | Finalist |
| 2016 | Michael V. Smith | My Body Is Yours | Finalist |
| 2017 | Cleve Jones | When We Rise | Winner |
| 2017 | Augusten Burroughs | Lust & Wonder | Finalist |
| 2017 | Brian Blanchfield | Proxies | Finalist |
| 2017 | Frederic Spotts | Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann | Finalist |
| 2017 | Garrard Conley | Boy Erased: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2017 | Joseph Osmundson | Capsid: A Love Song | Finalist |
| 2017 | Michael Schreiber | One Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin | Finalist |
| 2017 | Will Schwalbe | Books For Living | Finalist |
| 2018 | Chiké Frankie Edozien | Lives of Great Men | Winner |
| 2018 | Alan Bennett | Keeping On Keeping On | Finalist |
| 2018 | Bill Goldstein | The World Broke in Two | Finalist |
| 2018 | Casey Gerald | There Will Be No Miracles Here | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jonathan Alexander | Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology | Finalist |
| 2018 | José Antonio Rodríguez | House Built on Ashes | Finalist |
| 2018 | Kenny Fries | In the Province of the Gods | Finalist |
| 2018 | Parvez Sharma | A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance | Finalist |
| 2018 | Victor Corona | Night Class | Finalist |
| 2019 | Darnell L. Moore | No Ashes in the Fire | Winner |
| 2019 | Alexander Chee | How to Write an Autobiographical Novel | Finalist |
| 2019 | Deray Mckesson | On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope | Finalist |
| 2019 | Edmund White | The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading | Finalist |
| 2019 | Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Finalist |
| 2019 | Jerry Torre and Tony Maietta | The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens | Finalist |
| 2019 | Lillian Faderman | Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death | Finalist |
| 2020 | Saeed Jones | How We Fight for Our Lives | Winner |
| 2020 | Alvin Orloff | DISASTERAMA! Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997 | Finalist |
| 2020 | Chris Rush | The Light Years | Finalist |
| 2020 | Guy Hocquenghem with Max Fox (trans.) | The Amphitheater of the Dead | Finalist |
| 2020 | Isaac Mizrahi | I.M. | Finalist |
| 2020 | James Oseland | Jimmy Neurosis | Finalist |
| 2020 | Joseph Caldwell | In the Shadow of the Bridge | Finalist |
| 2020 | Siddharth Dube | An Indefinite Sentence | Finalist |
| 2021 | Mohsin Zaidi | A Dutiful Boy | Winner |
| 2021 | Billy-Ray Belcourt | A History of My Brief Body | Finalist |
| 2021 | François S. Clemmons | Officer Clemmons: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2021 | John Birdsall | The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard | Finalist |
| 2021 | R. Eric Thomas | Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America | Finalist |
| 2022 | Brian Broome | Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir | Winner |
| 2022 | Rajiv Mohabir | Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir | Finalist |
| 2022 | John Paul Brammer | Hola Papi | Finalist |
| 2022 | Peter Staley | Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism | Finalist |
| 2022 | Luis Felipe Fabre with JD Pluecker (trans.) | Writing with Caca / Escribir con Caca | Finalist |
| 2023 | Edgar Gomez | High-Risk Homosexual | Winner |
| 2023 | Seán Hewitt | All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2023 | Jim Elledge | An Angel in Sodom | Finalist |
| 2023 | Ron Goldberg | Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York | Finalist |
| 2023 | Jesse Leon | I’m Not Broken | Finalist |
| 2024 | Jason Yamas | Tweakerworld | Winner |
| 2024 | Charles Busch | Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy | Finalist |
| 2024 | Greg Marshall | Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It | Finalist |
| 2024 | Jedidiah Jenkins | Mother, Nature | Finalist |
| 2024 | Martin Duberman | Reaching Ninety | Finalist |