To Our Community,
I hope this message finds you with a determined and focused heart in a time when many things feel uncertain for LGBTQ+ people. My name is Jozie “J. Clapp” Clapp and I have been at Lambda Literary since June 16, 2025 as the executive director charged with finding the right path forward in collaboration with the staff, board, and community. I am immensely grateful to the Board, search firm DRiWaterstone, and interim executive director Dolph Goldenburg for a supportive and thorough search and transition into Lambda.
Since arriving, what I have heard the most is that Lambda’s most recent history has been filled with uncertainty. I seek to change that.
I have found what I would call a professional home within the virtual walls of Lambda and I am eager to lay a path that allows for stability and growth without sacrificing what is at the core of Lambda: the success and connectivity of LGBTQ+ people in the literary space. As many of you know, Lambda Literary is home to the Lambda Literary Awards, Writers in Schools, and the Writers Retreat. The closing of the Lambda Literary Review has been presented to me as a concern by the whole community and there is a great desire for us to bring it back–I have heard you and we are researching the most viable paths to a sustainable future for the Review. And, like the Review, we are putting similar effort into the futures of all of our programs–we have to be honest about what is and what is not working at Lambda.
But, with all the ways I have heard of the concerns for Lambda, I have also heard deep passion for Lambda’s success and calls for connectedness across our work. Are we effectively communicating with all of our community? I do not believe we currently are, but we now know that challenge and must overcome it through better timed and more appropriate communication. In many ways, we have a duty to honor the 40th anniversary of Lambda Literary in 2027 with a flourishing organization to celebrate, but we must start now.
When I accepted this role, I committed to a listening period to ensure I understood this organization top-to-bottom before making sweeping changes. So, through August, I will continue having individual conversations with many of the community members associated with Lambda Literary, and I will utilize town hall meetings in September and October to listen. And, I am so thankful for the committed and talented staff in place at Lambda. One day soon, we will see growth again. In the meantime, I want to share that we are still a functioning organization. We have the Writers Retreat July 31-August 9 and are poised to announce the shortlist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards on July 30th! We are also thankful that New York City renewed our Writers in Schools program as we celebrate its 10th year of partnership.
The reality is that we must work toward the future and our improvements while we maintain our current status quo. You can expect very few changes to the programming forthcoming in 2025; existing programs will continue to run as dictated by their production schedules planned in the fall of last year. We have, however, already begun the work of structuring programming for 2026 to include a return to in-person events wherever possible, while continuing to honor the reach and accessibility our virtual formats have provided over the last few years.
As always, we appreciate your support and the reminders of who Lambda Literary was and what it can be as we navigate crafting a future for everyone!
With gratitude and hope,
Jozie “J. Clapp” Clapp
Executive Director – Lambda Literary
