# Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography

The Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award established in 1994, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about lesbians. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.

## Recipients

List of Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography Recipients :
| Year | Author | Work | Result |
| 1994 | Josyane Savigneau | Marguerite Yourcenar | Winner |
| 1994 | Phyllis Burke | Family Values | Finalist |
| 1994 | Jewelle Gomez | Forty-Three Septembers | Finalist |
| 1994 | Rose Gladney (editor) | How Am I To Be Heard: Letters of Lillian Smith | Finalist |
| 1994 | David Sweetman | Mary Renault | Finalist |
| 1995 | Renate Stendhal (editor) | Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures | Winner |
| 1995 | Mab Segrest | Memoir of a Race Traitor | Finalist |
| 1995 | Elizabeth Bishop | One Art: Letters | Finalist |
| 1995 | Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer and Chris Fisher | Serving in Silence | Finalist |
| 1995 | Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz | The Power and the Passion of M. Carey Thomas | Finalist |
| 1996 | Erica Fischer | Aimee & Jaguar | Winner |
| 1996 | Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch | And Say Hi to Joyce | Finalist |
| 1996 | Susan E. Cayliff | Babe | Finalist |
| 1996 | Claudia Brenner with Hannah Ashley | Eight Bullets | Finalist |
| 1996 | Dorothy Allison | Two or Three Things I Know for Sure | Finalist |
| 1997 | Doris Grumbach | Life in a Day | Winner |
| 1997 | Candace Gingrich | Accidental Activist | Finalist |
| 1997 | Torie Osborn | Coming Home to America | Finalist |
| 1997 | Helen Sheehy | Eva Le Gallienne | Finalist |
| 1997 | Honor Moore | The White Blackbird | Finalist |
| 1998 | Barbara Wilson | Blue Windows: a Christian Science Childhood | Winner |
| 1998 | Margot Peters | May Sarton: a Biography | Finalist |
| 1998 | Kim Chernin | My Life as a Boy | Finalist |
| 1998 | Daphne Scholinski and Jane Meredith Adams | The Last Time I Wore a Dress | Finalist |
| 1998 | Hermione Lee | Virginia Woolf | Finalist |
| 1999 | Alison Bechdel | The Indelible Alison Bechdel; Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out for | Winner |
| 1999 | Joan Nestle | A Fragile Union | Finalist |
| 1999 | Rodger Streitmatter | Empty Without You | Finalist |
| 1999 | Sally Cline | Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John | Finalist |
| 1999 | Kate Summerscale | The Queen of Whale Cay | Finalist |
| 2000 | Diana Souhami | The Trials of Radclyffe Hall | Winner |
| 2000 | Kay Turner | Baby Precious Always Shines | Finalist |
| 2000 | Blanche Wiesen Cook | Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2: 1933–1938 | Finalist |
| 2000 | Barrie Jean Borich | My Lesbian Husband | Finalist |
| 2000 | Karla Jay | Tales of the Lavender Menace | Finalist |
| 2001 | Judith Barrington | Lifesaving | Winner |
| 2001 | Amber Hollibaugh | My Dangerous Desires | Finalist |
| 2001 | June Jordan | Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood | Finalist |
| 2001 | Carole Maso | The Room Lit by Roses | Finalist |
| 2001 | Joan Schenkar | Truly Wilde | Finalist |
| 2007 | Alison Bechdel | Fun Home | Winner |
| 2007 | Barbara Sjoholm | Incognito Street | Finalist |
| 2007 | Bettina Aptheker | Intimate Politics | Finalist |
| 2007 | Hilary Carlip | Queen of the Oddballs | Finalist |
| 2007 | Catherine Friend | Hit by a Farm | Finalist |
| 2008 | Nicola Griffith | And Now We Are Going to Have a Party | Winner |
| 2008 | Marusya Bociurkiw | Comfort Food for Breakups | Finalist |
| 2008 | Amy Hoffman | An Army of Ex-Lovers | Finalist |
| 2008 | Janet Malcolm | Two Lives: Gertrude & Alice | Finalist |
| 2008 | Jacqueline Taylor | Waiting for the Call | Finalist |
| 2009 | Maureen Seaton | Sex Talks to Girls: A Memoir | Winner |
| 2009 | Susan Griffin | Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy | Finalist |
| 2009 | Thea Hillman | Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) | Finalist |
| 2009 | Joanne Passet | Sex Variant Woman | Finalist |
| 2009 | Abbe Smith | Case of a Lifetime | Finalist |
| 2010 | Joan Schenkar | The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith | Winner |
| 2010 | Alix Dobkin | My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement | Finalist |
| 2010 | Ariel Schrag | Likewise: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag | Finalist |
| 2010 | Mary Cappello | Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life | Finalist |
| 2010 | Terry Galloway | Mean Little deaf Queer | Finalist |
| 2011 | Barbara Hammer | Hammer!: Making Movies Out of Sex and Life | Winner (tie) |
| 2011 | Julie Marie Wade | Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures | Winner (tie) |
| 2011 | Katherine A. Briccetti | Blood Strangers: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2011 | Chely Wright | Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer | Finalist |
| 2011 | Amie Klempnauer Miller | She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood | Finalist |
| 2012 | Jeanne Córdova | When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution | Winner |
| 2012 | Karleen Pendleton Jimenez | How to Get a Girl Pregnant | Finalist |
| 2012 | Catherine Friend | Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet | Finalist |
| 2012 | Julie Marie Wade | Small Fires: Essays | Finalist |
| 2012 | Jane Rule | Taking My Life | Finalist |
| 2013 | Jeanette Winterson | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | Winner |
| 2013 | Judy Grahn | A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet | Finalist |
| 2013 | Lisa Cohen | All We Know: Three Lives | Finalist |
| 2013 | Alison Bechdel | Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama | Finalist |
| 2013 | Luisita Lopez Torregrosa | Before the Rain | Finalist |
| 2013 | Sarah Schulman | The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination | Finalist |
| 2014 | Barrie Jean Borich | Body Geographic | Winner |
| 2014 | Donna Minkowitz | Growing up Golem | Finalist |
| 2014 | Annie Lanzillotto | L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir | Finalist |
| 2014 | Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton | Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology | Finalist |
| 2015 | AlethEa Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith | Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith | Winner |
| 2015 | Lynette Loeppky | Cease – a memoir of love, loss and desire | Finalist |
| 2015 | Kelly Cogswell | Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger | Finalist |
| 2015 | Ariel Gore | The End of Eve | Finalist |
| 2015 | Terry Mutchler | Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America | Finalist |
| 2016 | Kate Carroll de Gutes | Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear | Winner |
| 2016 | Cat Cora | Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef’s Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness | Finalist |
| 2016 | Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | Dirty River | Finalist |
| 2016 | Carrie Brownstein | Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl | Finalist |
| 2016 | Allison Gruber | You’re Not Edith | Finalist |
| 2017 | Gloria Joseph | ody, Undone: Living On After Great Pain | Winner |
| 2017 | Ma-Nee Chacaby | A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder | Finalist |
| 2017 | Tig Notaro | I’m Just a Person | Finalist |
| 2017 | Joanne Passet | Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier | Finalist |
| 2018 | Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich | The Fact of a Body | Winner |
| 2018 | Melissa Febos | Abandon Me: Memoirs | Finalist |
| 2018 | Eileen Myles | Afterglow | Finalist |
| 2018 | Renate Stendhal | Kiss Me Again, Paris: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2018 | Anne-christine d'Adesky | The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris | Finalist |
| 2019 | Zahra Patterson | Chronology | Winner |
| 2019 | Barrie Jean Borich | Apocalypse, Darling | Finalist |
| 2019 | Julia Van Haaften | Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography | Finalist |
| 2019 | Sandra Gail Lambert | A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2019 | Marusya Bociurkiw | Food Was Her Country: The Memoir of a Queer Daughter | Finalist |
| 2019 | Sarah Viren | MINE: Essays | Finalist |
| 2019 | Esther Newton | My Butch Career: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2019 | Lindsay Nixon | nîtisânak | Finalist |
| 2020 | Samra Habib | We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir | Winner |
| 2020 | Benjamin Moser | Sontag: Her Life and Work | Finalist |
| 2020 | Saidiya Hartman | Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval | Finalist |
| 2020 | Edie Windsor with Joshua Lyon | A Wild and Precious Life | Finalist |
| 2020 | Jaquira Díaz | Ordinary Girls | Finalist |
| 2020 | Julia Koets | The Rib Joint: A Memoir In Essays | Finalist |
| 2020 | T Kira Madden | Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls | Finalist |
| 2020 | Elissa Altman | Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing | Finalist |
| 2021 | Jenn Shapland | My Autobiography of Carson McCullers | Winner |
| 2021 | Tania De Rozario | And The Walls Come Crumbling Down | Finalist |
| 2021 | Tana Wojczuk | Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity | Finalist |
| 2021 | Nina Kennedy | Practicing for Love: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2021 | Lori Soderlind | The Change: My Great American, Postindustrial, Midlife Crisis Tour | Finalist |
| 2022 | Sophie Santos | The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had) | Winner |
| 2022 | Grace Perry | The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture | Finalist |
| 2022 | Leslie Cohen | The Audacity of a Kiss: Love, Art, and Liberation | Finalist |
| 2022 | Jonathan Ned Katz | The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams | Finalist |
| 2022 | Adele Bertei | Why Labelle Matters | Finalist |
| 2023 | Kathryn Schulz | Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness | Winner |
| 2023 | Raquel Gutiérrez | Brown Neon | Finalist |
| 2023 | Putsata Reang | Ma and Me | Finalist |
| 2023 | Chris Belcher | Pretty Baby: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2023 | Neema Avashia | Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place | Finalist |
| 2024 | Amelia Possanza | Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives | Winner |
| 2024 | Lamya H | Hijab Butch Blues | Finalist |
| 2024 | Vi Khi Nao | Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche | Finalist |
| 2024 | Sarah Viren | To Name the Bigger Lie | Finalist |
| 2024 | Lynnée Denise | Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters | Finalist |