8 Award-Winning Queer Books You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante (2019 Lambda Award for Transgender Fiction)

This is easy 1 of my favourite novels of all-time, and I’ll ne'er recognize wherefore much radical haven’t work it. It’s funny, playful, heartwarming, and creative. Written successful the signifier of an encyclopedia astir a fictional TV show, Little Blue, it’s the communicative of the relationship betwixt 2 trans women. The narrator is grieving her champion person Viv, who’s conscionable died — the encyclopedia is her mode of honoring her person and processing her grief. Hazel Jane Plante is simply a maestro satellite builder, adjacent if her books are acceptable successful existent places.

Crossfire by Staceyann Chin (2020 American Book Award)

Staceyann Chin was a beloved spoken connection writer earlier she published this phenomenal collection, which includes enactment from her full lengthy career. It’s vibrant and accessible poetry, sometimes comic and sometimes devastating. She writes astir her Jamaican heritage, her narration with her mother, queerness, activism, and truthful overmuch more.

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Lote by Shola von Reinhold (2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize)

This is different caller connected my all-time favorites list! It came retired successful the U.S. successful 2022 to small fanfare, truthful let maine to bash immoderate fanfare-ing due to the fact that this caller is extraordinary. It’s astir Mathilda, a Black queer aesthete and archivist who’s transfixed by assorted 20th period artists. When she comes crossed the enactment of Hermia Druitt, a forgotten Black modernist poet, she sets retired a travel to to larn more, which sends her to a precise unusual artists’ colony. I can’t bash this publication justness — it’s an inventive, surprising, deliciously weird caller astir Black queer creation and the unit of the archive.

Theory by Dionne Brand (2018 OCM Bocas Prize forCaribbean Literature)

Fans of books astir writers, this 1 is for you! The communicative follows an unnamed postgraduate pupil successful the midst of penning their dissertation — an ambitious and perpetually changing treatise connected the analyzable intersections of art, race, gender, and culture. As they write, their beingness is interrupted by a bid of 3 lovers, each of whom changes however they presumption their enactment — and themself.

The Black Period by Hafizah Augustus Geter (2023 PEN Open Book Award)

In this meandering, lyrical memoir, Geter reflects connected art, Blackness, queerness, grief, memory, disablement and history, and the ways each of these experiences and identities person shaped her life. Anyone who loves genre-bending memoirs volition admit this work, which masterfully blends idiosyncratic narrative, taste critique, creation history, and more.

Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco by K. Iver (2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry)

This gorgeous debut is simply a emotion missive and a grief song. The talker recounts their archetypal love, their ain and their beloved’s tumble into queer and trans identity, their beloved’s suicide, and the overwhelming grief that comes afterward. It’s hard to summarize conscionable however almighty this enactment is. Iver interrogates the messy, nonlinear throughlines betwixt queer and trans pasts, presents, and futures. Their connection is striking, immediate, and sharp. Many of the poems are profoundly rooted successful spot — Mississippi — but they are besides rooted successful the expansive anticipation of trans joyousness and futurity.

The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai (2019 Lambda Award for Lesbian Fiction)

Set successful a dizzying aboriginal ravaged by clime change, this caller combines elements of sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian lit. It follows a radical of parthenogenic women who person been exiled from their home, Salt Water City. They’ve built their ain community, distant from the rampant sexism and greed Salt Water City is known for. But erstwhile a mysterious plague threatens their mode of life, they’re forced to face their postulation and idiosyncratic pasts — and possibly alteration the satellite successful the process.

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart (2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction)

The National Book Award is 1 of the astir well-known U.S. literate awards, but sometimes the nonfiction winners don’t get the aforesaid attraction arsenic the fabrication winners do! This broad biography of Alain Locke is decidedly worthy your time. Stewart delves into the idiosyncratic and nonrecreational beingness of the antheral often known arsenic the begetter of the Harlem Renaissance. He explores Locke’s childhood, education, and travels, his far-reaching enactment and relationships with artists specified arsenic Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and his beingness arsenic a cheery man.