# Randy Shilts Award

The Randy Shilts Award is an annual literary award, presented by Publishing Triangle to honour works of non-fiction of relevance to the gay community. First presented in 1997, the award was named in memory of American journalist Randy Shilts.

## Recipients

Award winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Publisher | Result |
| 1997 | Anthony Heilbut | Thomas Mann | | Winner |
| 1997 | Keith Boykin | One More River to Cross | | Finalist |
| 1997 | Mark Doty | Heaven’s Coast | | Finalist |
| 1998 | David Sedaris | Naked | | Winner |
| 1998 | Daniel Harris | The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture | | Finalist |
| 1998 | Gabriel Rotello | Sexual Ecology | | Finalist |
| 1999 | John Loughery | The Other Side of Silence | | Winner |
| 1999 | Michael Bronski | The Pleasure Principle | | Finalist |
| 1999 | Richard Rambuss | Closer Devotions | | Finalist |
| 2000 | Eric Brandt (ed.) | Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality | The New Press | Winner |
| 2000 | James M. Saslow | Pictures and Passions | Viking Press | Finalist |
| 2000 | John Manual Andriote | Victory Deferred | University of Chicago Press | Finalist |
| 2001 | Mark Matousek | The Boy He Left Behind: A Man’s Search for His Lost Father | Riverhead Books | Winner |
| 2001 | Beth Loffreda | Losing Matt Shepard | Columbia University Press | Finalist |
| 2001 | Ned Rorem | Lies: A Diary 1986–1999 | Counterpoint | Finalist |
| 2002 | Ricardo J. Brown | The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s | University of Minnesota Press | Winner |
| 2002 | Robert Reid-Pharr | Black Gay Man | New York University Press | Winner |
| 2002 | Barry Werth | The Scarlet Professor | Doubleday | Finalist |
| 2003 | Neil Miller | Sex Crime Panic | Alyson Books | Winner |
| 2003 | Colm Tóibín | Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature | Scribner | Finalist |
| 2003 | Richard Bruce Nugent, edited by Thomas H. Wirth | Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance | Duke University Press | Finalist |
| 2004 | John D’Emilio | Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin | Free Press | Winner |
| 2004 | Augusten Burroughs | Dry | St. Martin’s Press | Finalist |
| 2004 | Dale Peck | What We Lost | Houghton Mifflin | Finalist |
| 2005 | David K. Johnson | The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government | University of Chicago Press | Winner |
| 2005 | David Carter | Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution | St. Martin’s Press | Finalist |
| 2005 | Graham Robb | Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century | W. W. Norton | Finalist |
| 2006 | Martin Moran | The Tricky Part | Beacon Press | Winner |
| 2006 | Neil McKenna | The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde | Basic Books | Finalist |
| 2006 | Thomas Glave | Words to Our Now | University of Minnesota Press | Finalist |
| 2007 | Kenji Yoshino | Covering | Random House | Winner |
| 2007 | Bernard Cooper | The Bill from My Father | Simon & Schuster | Finalist |
| 2007 | Rigoberto González | Butterfly Boy | University of Wisconsin Press | Finalist |
| 2008 | Michael Rowe | Other Men’s Sons | Cormorant Books | Winner |
| 2008 | Martin Duberman | The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein | Alfred A. Knopf | Finalist |
| 2008 | Michael S. Sherry | Gay Artists in Modern American Culture | University of North Carolina Press | Finalist |
| 2009 | Kai Wright | Drifting Toward Love | Beacon Press | Winner |
| 2009 | Bob Morris | Assisted Loving | Harper/HarperCollins | Finalist |
| 2009 | Linas Alsenas | Gay America | Amulet Books/Abrams | Finalist |
| 2010 | James Davidson | The Greeks and Greek Love | Random House | Winner |
| 2010 | Chad Heap | Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife | University of Chicago Press | Finalist |
| 2010 | David Plante | The Pure Lover | Beacon Press | Finalist |
| 2011 | Justin Spring | Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Winner |
| 2011 | R. Tripp Evans | Grant Wood | Alfred A. Knopf | Finalist |
| 2011 | Wendy Moffat | A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Finalist |
| 2012 | Mark D. Jordan | Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk About Homosexuality | University of Chicago Press | Winner |
| 2012 | Martin Duberman | A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds | The New Press | Finalist |
| 2012 | Michael Bronski | A Queer History of the United States | Beacon Press | Finalist |
| 2013 | Christopher Bram | Eminent Outlaws | Twelve/Hachette | Winner |
| 2013 | Cynthia Carr | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Bloomsbury | Finalist |
| 2013 | David M. Halperin | How to Be Gay | Belknap/Harvard University Press | Finalist |
| 2013 | Lisa Jarnot | Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus | University of California Press | Finalist |
| 2014 | Hilton Als | White Girls | McSweeney’s | Winner |
| 2014 | Jim Elledge | Henry Darger: Throwaway Boy | Overlook | Finalist |
| 2014 | Lori Duron | Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous Gender Creative Son | Broadway Books | Finalist |
| 2014 | Susana Peña | Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boat Lift to Gay Cuban Miami | University of Minnesota Press | Finalist |
| 2015 | Robert Beachy | Gay Berlin | Alfred A. Knopf | Winner |
| 2015 | Martin Duberman | Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS | The New Press | Finalist |
| 2015 | Philip Gefter | Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe | Liveright/W. W. Norton | Finalist |
| 2015 | Richard Blanco | The Prince of Los Cocuyos | Ecco/HarperCollins | Finalist |
| 2016 | Barney Frank | Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Winner |
| 2016 | Michelangelo Signorile | It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Winner |
| 2016 | Dale Peck | Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDS | Soho Press | Finalist |
| 2016 | Matthew Spender | A House in St. John’s Wood: In Search of My Parents | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Finalist |
| 2017 | David France | How to Survive a Plague | Alfred A. Knopf | Winner |
| 2017 | Kevin Mumford | Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis | University of North Carolina Press | Finalist |
| 2017 | Paul Lisicky | The Narrow Door | Graywolf Press | Finalist |
| 2017 | Will Schwalbe | Books for Living | Alfred A. Knopf | Finalist |
| 2018 | Eli Clare | Brilliant Imperfection | Duke University Press | Winner |
| 2018 | Chike Frankie Edozien | Lives of Great Men | Team Angelica Publishing | Finalist |
| 2018 | Peter Gajdics | The Inheritance of Shame | Brown Paper Press | Finalist |
| 2018 | Richard A. McKay | Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic | University of Chicago Press | Finalist |
| 2019 | Alexander Chee | How to Write an Autobiographical Novel | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Winner |
| 2019 | Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Yale University Press | Finalist |
| 2019 | Lillian Faderman | Harvey Milk | Yale University Press | Finalist |
| 2019 | Robert W. Fieseler | Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and Rise of Gay Liberation | Liveright/W. W. Norton | Finalist |
| 2020 | Saeed Jones | How We Fight for Our Lives | Simon & Schuster | Winner |
| 2020 | New York Public Library (ed.) | The Stonewall Reader | Penguin Books | Finalist |
| 2020 | David K. Johnson | Buying Gay | Columbia University Press | Finalist |
| 2020 | Hugh Ryan | When Brooklyn Was Queer | St. Martin’s | Finalist |
| 2021 | Eric Cervini | The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Winner |
| 2021 | John Birdsall | The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard | W. W. Norton | Finalist |
| 2021 | Ross A. Slotten | Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey Through the AIDS Crisis | University of Chicago Press | Finalist |
| 2021 | Wayne Koestenbaum | Figure It Out | Soft Skull Press | Finalist |
| 2022 | Brian Broome | Punch Me Up to the Gods | Mariner | Winner |
| 2022 | C. Winter Han | Racial Erotics: Gay Men of Color, Sexual Racism, and the Politics of Desire | University of Washington Press | Finalist |
| 2022 | Jeremy Atherton Lin | Gay Bar: Why We Went Out | Little, Brown | Finalist |
| 2022 | Rajiv Mohabir | Antiman: A Memoir | Restless Books | Finalist |
| 2023 | Ron Goldberg | Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of Act Up New York | Fordham University Press | Winner |
| 2023 | Gregory D. Smithers | Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal and Sovereignty in Native America | Beacon Press | Finalist |
| 2023 | Jenn Budd | Against the Wall: My Journey from Border Patrol Agent to Immigrant Rights Activist | Heliotrope | Finalist |
| 2023 | Scott Bane | A Union Like Ours: The Love Story of F.O Matthiesen and Russell Cheney | University of Massachusetts | Finalist |
| 2024 | Joseph Plaster | Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin | Duke University Press | Winner |
| 2024 | Gregory D. Smithers | Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto, by Zachary Zane (, an imprint of Abrams Books) | Abrams Image | Finalist |
| 2024 | Greg Marshall | Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It | Abrams Books | Finalist |
| 2024 | Mark D. Jordan | Queer Callings: Untimely Notes on Names and Desires | Fordham University Press | Finalist |
| 2025 | Katherine Bucknell | Christopher Isherwood Inside-Out | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Finalist |
| 2025 | Lucy Hughes-Hallett | The Scapegoat | HarperCollins | Finalist |
| 2025 | Will Tosh | Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare | Seal Press | Finalist |
| 2025 | Brontez Purnell | Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt | MCD | Finalist |