Lambda Literary Foundation Award - Group Post

The purpose of the Lambda Literary Foundation Award (LLFA) is to "celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians - the whole literary community." From www.lambdaliterary.org/index.html

The selection criteria is as follows:
~Books are about LGBT categories
~Author does not have to be LGBT themselves, as long as their piece of literature includes something about LGBT. Perhaps even one character.
~There are 21 different categories that book nominations fall under
~Only the author or a publisher can nominate a book.

The selection committee includes the writers themselves, booksellers, librarians, teachers, book reviewers, journalists, and/or members of the literary community. It is also stated that editors and publishers or members of the Board of Trustees may serve as a judge.

The LLFA relies on support from the literary community to connect LGBT writers and readers. Personal donations and organizations also help to fund the award.

Our group could only find 4 young adult books that had won the award. However, not all of the books' main themes were LGBT. In "Eight Seconds" by Jean Ferris, the story is not at all about LGBT, it is about bull riders and the rodeo. However, it won the award because one of the characters is gay. The other young adult books we found were "Between Mom and Jo" by Julie Anne Peters, "Express of the World" by Sara Ryan, and "The Full Spectrum" edited by David Levithan and Billy Merrell. "The Full Spectrum" is a compilation of short stories that are about LGBT.

Finally, the book "Boy Meets Boy" by David Levithan is also a winner of the LLFA!

Lambda Literary Foundation Award

Our group split up duties for preparing for class today. Stephanie J. sent me a list of the titles and author's she found who had won the award. With that list I then went to the Capitol Area District Library website (http://www.cadl.org/) and ran a search in the catalog for each book. CADL had many of the books, but not at the library I go to (Okemos). I placed many of the books on hold to be delivered to the Okemos library, but I knew it would take a few days for the books to arrive. I received emails on Tuesday and Wednesday morning that some of the books arrived, but before that I was concerned if the books would arrive on time. Here is the list of books that Stephanie sent me to search for:
*1001 Beds by Tim Miller
*My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan
*Izzy and Eve by Neal Drinnan
*The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
*Fresh Tracks by Georgia Beers
*When the Stars Come Out by Rob Byrnes
*Blind Eye by John Morgan Wilson
*So Hard to Say by Alex Sanchez
*Letters in the Attic by Bonnie Shimko
*Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai
*Full Spectrum by David Levithan and Billy Merrell
*Between Mom and Jo by Julie Anne Peters