Honoring books published in 2004, the Publishing Triangle awards were presented the evening of Tuesday, May 10, in the Tishman Auditorium, The New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York, N.Y.

The winners and finalists in the nonfiction, fiction, and poetry categories are:

The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution (St. Martin’s Press)
WINNER! David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (University of Chicago Press)
Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (W. W. Norton)

The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Alexis De Veaux, Warrior Poet: A Life of Audre Lorde (W. W. Norton)
WINNER! Alison Smith, Name All the Animals (Scribner)
Evelyn C. White, Alice Walker: A Life (W. W. Norton)

The Ferro-Grumley Awards for Fiction: Men
WINNER! Adam Berlin, Belmondo Style (St. Martin's Press)
Colm Tóibín, The Master (Scribner)
Jim Tushinski, Van Allen's Ecstasy (Southern Tier Editions/Harrington Park Press)

The Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction: Women
WINNER! Stacey D'Erasmo, A Seahorse Year (Houghton Mifflin)
Emma Donoghue, Life Mask (Harcourt)
Heather Lewis, Notice (Serpent's Tail)

The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry
Ron Mohring, Survivable World (Word Works)
WINNER! Carl Phillips, The Rest of Love (Farrar Strauss Giroux)
D. A. Powell, Cocktails (Graywolf)

The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Adrienne Rich, The School Among the Ruins (W. W. Norton)
Lee Ann Roripaugh, Year of the Snake (Southern Illinois University Press)
WINNER! Maureen Seaton, Venus Examines Her Breast (Carnegie Mellon University Press)

The recipient of the 2005 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement is Edward Field. The award is named in honor of a legendary editor of the 1970s and 1980s. Field, the first male poet ever recognized by this award, is the author of A Frieze for a Temple of Love, Magic Words, Counting Myself Lucky, and others. Joan Larkin, one of this year’s Whitehead judges, calls Field “one of the major American poets since the mid-20th century and a truly indispensable artist.” Judge David Groff adds, “His poems are easily accessible, their language deceptively plainspoken.” The Bill Whitehead Award is given to a man in odd-numbered years and a woman in even years.

In addition, the Publishing Triangle will present a special Leadership Award to The Lesbian Herstory Archives, the largest and oldest lesbian archive in the world. Founded in the mid-1970s by a group of women who were concerned about the failure of mainstream publishers, libraries, and research institutions to value lesbian culture, this archive houses more than 20,000 books, along with thousands of photographs, magazines, files, film and video footage, and other materials. Its headquarters in a Brooklyn (N.Y.) brownstone preserve many publications that no other library or archive originally deemed important enough to keep. The Lesbian Herstory Archives truly deserves this leadership award.

The Robert Chesley Foundation, named for the late playwright whose play Jerker was the first play about AIDS to be staged in the United States, has announced the winners of its 2004 award for Lifetime Achievement in Playwriting. This year’s co-winners are Michael Kearns (Lifetime Achievement Award) and Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (Emerging Artist). Past Chesley recipients include Rebecca Ranson, Jane Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, Christopher Shinn, Doric Wilson, Lisa Kron, Susan Miller, Robert Patrick, Victor Lodato, Chey Yu, Madeline Olnek, Jeff Weiss, Rev. Al Carmines, and H. M. Koutoukas.

To view a complete list of past Triangle Award winners, visit our awards page. There you will also find information about special privileges that Publishing Triangle members have in nominating books and authors for these literary awards.

This page was last updated on May 11, 2005.