Lambda Literary is pleased to announce José Enrique Medina as the winner of the 2026 J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50!
This award is made possible by writer and philanthropist Chuck Forester, who created it out of the firmly held belief that “Writers who start late are just as good as other writers, it just took the buggers more time.” The prize will go to an unpublished LGBTQ writer over 50 working in any genre. The award includes a cash prize of $5,000.
José Enrique Medina
José Enrique Medina earned his BA in English from Cornell University. His poetry collection Haunt Me won the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in USA Today Hispanic Living Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Best Microfiction 2019, and elsewhere. He is a Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation fellow and the founder of the Chickens & Poetry Residency for Writers. Connect with him on Instagram @MedinaWrites or at MedinaWrites.com.
At a time when we are haunted by a political insistence on binaries, it is exciting to read an excerpt from Medina's unique and alive novel-in-verse. The novel, set in the context of the queer Latino experience, explores themes of ambivalent masculinity and femininity, selfhood, aging, identity, and ghostliness. It asks who we allow ourselves to love and to love us? Who hears us when we try to speak? How skillful and smart to use a hybrid form, both poem and narrative, to write about the spaces between false distinctions! Without a doubt Medina's stunning and ambitious project has the potential for enormous intellectual, cultural, and emotional impact for our community (and beyond). Additionally, Medina's writing accords with his community activism with queer young writers needing encouragement and someone to listen. For these reasons, it is a joy to award him the J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50. We look forward to this award-winning project –and many to come– reaching the shelves.
