Lammy Glamour

May 19th, 2006

Tonight I went to the Lambda Book Awards in Washington, DC. Invasion of the Dykes was up for a humor award, but lost to a book called Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff. But I couldn’t feel too bad because Kate Clinton’s What the L didn’t win either. Then I got to present the fiction award with Andrew Holleran. This was very exciting. For some reason I never read Holleran’s classic Dancer from the Dance until a couple months ago. It was really mesmerizing, all about the glory days of New York in the seventies. And thus it was a particular thrill to meet him, even though I didn’t exactly meet him, we just showed up on the podium at the same time and read the names of the fiction finalists. But here’s a photo of half his head–he’s the guy with the white hair behind the other guy.

Here I am before the awards ceremony, on the right. Next to me is Abha Dawesar, whose novel Babyji tied with Helen Humphreys’ Wild Dogs in the lesbian fiction category. On the left is Kris Kleindienst, of Left Bank Books in St. Louis.

And here’s Kim Brinster and Janet of Oscar Wilde Books in NYC, flanking Holly Bemis, my publicist for Fun Home at Houghton Mifflin. Charles Flowers, the new head of the Lambda Literary Organization, really did a swell job putting the evening together. The ever gracious Katherine Forrest opened the ceremony–and her book Daughters of an Emerald Dusk won the sci-fi category. It was a pretty fun night.