FAQs

Lammy Award winners are announced and receive their recognition at the annual award ceremony. They are then shipped a physical trophy and they or their publishers have the opportunity to purchase “Lambda Literary Award” stickers in physical and digital formats for copies of the award-winning title. Lammy Awards do not include a cash prize.

Yes. How much that fee is depends on who is doing the submitting. We use a tiered fee system which charges Big 4 publishers Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins a higher fee (as they can afford it), and small presses/individual authors submitting on their own behalf a lower fee. As of the 2024 award cycle, these fees were $115 and $65 per title, respectively.

Each category is judged by a panel of three judges selected primarily from Lambda’s extensive community of readers, authors, fellows, former finalists, and other stakeholders, provided they themselves do not have titles eligible during the award year. Judges and their categories are kept confidential unless they want to be named in the credits for the ceremony. We maintain a goal of selecting judges who share an affinity with the category they are judging as they are experts on their own representation. The judges are provided with a broad rubric for selecting their longlist titles, with factors including the title’s LGBTQ content, quality of writing, and artistic merit. Judges may also consider factors such as the presence of harmful representation or the impact the title or the author has had on the LGBTQ community. Judge panels are given autonomy in making their decisions, meaning that Lambda’s board and staff do not interfere or dictate the selection process. Titles provided for the longlist (top 10 titles, not publicized) are vetted to ensure they meet all technical criteria for eligibility (verified publication year, appropriate category and publishing avenue, etc) and any title found to not meet those requirements is disqualified. Finalist authors or their submitting representatives (publishers, editors) are notified of shortlist (top 5) placement in advance of the public announcement, to confirm details such as contributor names and whether or not they will be accepting the nomination.

Beginning in 2025, submissions will be open January-March of the award year for titles published in the previous year. So submissions for the 2025 Lammy Awards recognizing works published in 2024 are open January-March 2025. Previously, submissions for each award cycle opened September-November for titles published in the same year. Lambda’s Special Prizes (sponsored cash awards which are not Lammys) open in March of the award year. Pay attention to the announced dates as no extensions will be granted once the submission window closes.

Staff and board members’ works may not be considered for Lammy Awards or Special Prizes while they are employed by or serve on the board for Lambda. These restrictions are not placed on volunteers or programming participants such as retreat faculty or fellows.

We provide a breakdown of what each category considers here. But the line between Studies and Nonfiction categories for example can be pretty thin. It’s always a good practice to consider not just where your work fits, but where it may be most competitive. Studies, for example, is typically populated by academic texts or works published by universities. The difference between Fiction and Romance may just be the presence of an HEA (happily ever after). Use your best judgment, and if you change your mind the day after you send it in, send us an email and we’ll update the category for you. Just don’t change your mind too much.

Lammy categories have been fluid since their inception, responding to changes in community, culture, and the growth and expansion of queer identities. Categories are decided based primarily on submission volume for at least a couple of consecutive years. If a given category does not receive enough submissions to generate a longlist for multiple years, we may combine it with other complementary categories. Similarly, new categories may be added as the LGBTQ+ spectrum grows. We strive to be more inclusive in the categories we do have, with the understanding that each individual identity may not be published in a substantial enough volume to warrant their own individual categories. The Lammys currently host 26 categories, among the most of any literary award. The more categories we add, the more judges must be sought and supplied with honoraria, the more trophies must be awarded, and the longer the ceremony becomes. We hope that the occasional consolidation of categories isn’t seen as an erasure, but an expanded recognition of all the identities that make up Lambda’s community.

Absolutely. We would love to see more submissions featuring intersex, aro/ace, two-spirit, pansexual, and other representation. “LGBTQ” is not a perfect shorthand, but we hope you see yourself as part of our community and as entitled to our resources and platforms as any other.

Submissions require digital copies of the material to be submitted through our Submittable portal. All judges have access to the digital copies of works submitted in their categories. In some cases, judges request to receive materials in physical form as an accessibility consideration. Reading 45-150 novel-length works on a screen within the span of a few months can cause significant amounts of stress and strain even for readers without pre-existing limitations. All judges are also inevitably offered physical copies of their top 10 titles as part of their honoraria. Because we have no way of knowing what these titles will be at the start of the submission window, we request that 3-4 physical copies of all submissions are mailed in order to accommodate these circumstances. In some cases, the availability or lack thereof of a physical copy will determine how much of a book a judge is able to review and how far it makes it in the deliberation process. As the Lammys are an increasingly international award, we understand that particularly for self-published authors, shipping books can be a substantial financial commitment without a promised return on their investment. It is up to each submitter to determine whether that expense is worth it.

Books which are not requested by the judges remain in what is called the Lammys Library, a sub-program which allows us to donate remaining books to non-profit community groups, LGBTQ+ resource centers, libraries, Pride festivals, incarcerated individuals, and teens in transitional housing. To date and in the time of diminished access to LGBTQ+ literature due to book banning and oppressive legislature, the Lammys Library has been able to donate over 6,000 books to worthy organizations dedicated to ensuring our stories make it into the hands of readers who need them.

Requests for withdrawals with refunds must be made within the submission window. Once that window closes and the titles move forward to the judging stage, we will not provide refunds for reasons outside of an error made on Lambda’s part. The exception would be for reasons related to a moved/delayed publication date, or in cases of duplicate titles such as those submitted by an author and then again by their publisher or other representative. In these cases, we default to refunding the author, and those refunds may be processed outside of the submission window. Submittable is unable to process partial refunds. So submitters who, for example, pay for six entries and end up needing to pull two of them, will be offered the options of either A: being refunded the full amount and then resubmitting and paying for the correct number in a restart of the submission process, or B: withdrawing the two additional titles without refund, and crediting the amount paid for the two titles to be applied to submissions entered in the next award cycle.

In an effort to improve our record keeping and transparency, we’ve compiled a searchable database of all of our finalists since the awards’ inception in 1988. The database is also useful for tracking the evolution of Lammys categories and the prevalence of certain publishers over time.