Lambda Literary is pleased to announce Daniel Garcia as the winner of the Denneny Prize for Editorial Excellence!
The prize is named in honor of Michael Denneny, who founded the first-ever LGBTQ+ imprint at a major publishing house, was essential in the publishing of literature dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and so generously shared his talents with writers right up until the end of his life. The award will go to an editor whose commitment to the publication of LGBTQ+ writers and literature contributes significantly to the advancement of the LGBTQ+ community. The Denneny Award for Editorial Excellence is the only editorial award that not only recognizes the support provided by editors to the literary community, but also the importance of editors in the advancement of a social movement. The winner will receive a cash prize of $2,500.
Daniel Garcia
Daniel Garcia is a writer, editor, and educator. Daniel’s essays appear in Guernica, Michigan Quarterly Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Poems appear in Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and others. Supported by scholarships, fellowships, and residencies from Lambda Literary, SmokeLong Quarterly, Carolyn Moore Writers House, Vermont Studio Center, and more. Daniel currently serves as the InteR/e/views Editor for Split Lip Magazine and the Micro Editor for The Offing.
As an educator, Daniel has been a mentor with SUNHOUSE Literary and was recognized by YoungArts in 2025 for outstanding mentorship and artistic guidance. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. Find Daniel at danielwritespoetry.com or on Bluesky @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social.
Daniel's dedication to uplifting the voices of marginalized and all-too-often ignored voices is especially clear in Daniel's work at the Vermont Studio Center, GASHER Journal, and The Offing. I am particularly impressed by the balance Daniel strikes in their intuitive, empathetic approach to editing in strengthening creative work accepted for publication while honoring the writers’ original intentions. It is with pleasure that I name Daniel as the winner of this prestigious prize.
One common thread stands out across Daniel Garcia’s multiple nominations for the Denneny Award for Editorial Excellence: Daniel Garcia champions diverse writers, elevating their work to overcome underrepresentation of intersectionality in the publishing world. Garcia’s collaborative approach to recruiting and refining authors’ works across a wide array of genres has yielded a portfolio that exemplifies the career of someone dedicated to producing impactful literature.
A Word from Daniel Garcia
Friends, I’m so excited and starstruck to say that I’m the recipient of this year’s Denneny Award for Editorial Excellence with Lambda Literary. I’ll try to keep things short here, but there are many to whom I owe my gratitude for their support: To the lovely folks at Lambda, including my past workshop faculty, for the ways they’ve supported me, both now and as a two-time Fellow in Nonfiction (2022) and in Multi-Genre (2023) writing. There are so few awards that recognize the efforts of editors, and even less for queer editors. What a gift it is to be in community with Lambda. To the selection committee for honoring me with this award—I cried on the phone when I got the news, and again when I saw the gracious and kind words from the judges. To everyone who nominated me and saw in me something worth telling the world about. To my friends and family (both chosen and otherwise), who are all far too many to name individually here. To the literary magazines and editors I’ve worked with as a writer for their generosity. To the literary magazines I have edited for, specifically GASHER Journal, Split Lip Magazine, and The Offing. To the writers I’ve edited: It has been nothing short of a privilege to be trusted with the weight of your creative work. The relationship between writer and editor is a spacious and delicate thing, one predicated upon a collaborative willingness towards putting a piece of literature in front of its highest creative possibility, to pushing it past the limits of its occasion. To have had a hand in your art, no matter how small, is an immeasurable gift. I hope I’ve done right by you. All of you—examples, methods, cartographies. When I got the call from Lambda (originally a voicemail that I listened to, stunned, before frantically calling back) telling me the news, I remember my hands over my heart. I remember weeping. I remember saying, “I feel so possible.” And so, let me just say—now, tomorrow, for the rest of my days—Daniel: Thank you for being possible. Friends, may it always be that you remember you are possible.
