Arts
Vocal Minority Gets New Director
Lammy for Vermont Cartoonist
The Real Problem(s) with Bondage Erotica
Lammy for
Vermont Cartoonist
by Euan Bear
Last
month Vermont resident and cartoonist Alison Bechdel received a Lambda
Literary Award in the humor category for her latest collection Dykes
and Other Sundry Carbon-Based Life Forms to Watch Out For. The Lambda
Literary Awards recognize the best in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
literature. Each award winner is selected by a panel of judges from five
finalist nominees in each of 20 categories.
Asked about the award via email, Bechdel
wrote, "Well, I have mixed feelings about awards. I'm ecstatic when
I win, and deeply depressed when I lose. But seriously, it was very nice
to win a Lammy. This is my fifth, actually. It always feels great to get
that nod of recognition from the queer literary community."
She wrote that the book was doing a bit
better in sales than previous collections, and that she had done readings
only in Washington, DC, New York, and Boston. "I didn't do anything
locally because I come out with new books every couple of years and people
start to get a little burned out. Like, 'Oh, no. Yet another Dykes To
Watch Out For booksigning?' So I'm giving it a rest for a while in Vermont."
Bechdel is balancing writing a graphical
memoir about her father with the continuing saga of the DTWOF strip. "My
life is broken down into two-week sessions. I work for two weeks on the
strip, then I switch to the memoir. I am getting kind of nervous, though,
because my next Dykes book is due in December, and the book about my dad
is due in March. And I have a really phenomenal amount of drawing I have
to do. I'm sort of considering this year as a retreat – I can't
do anything but work."
Other winners of note (a selected list):
lgbt erotica – Best Lesbian Erotica 2004, ed. by Tristan
Taormino (Cleis Press); visual arts – Women Seeing Women,
edited by Lonthar Schirmer (W.W. Norton); lgbt fiction anthology –
Pulp Friction, edited by Michael Bronski (St. Martin's Press);
lgbt memoir/autobiography – Naked in the Promised Land,
by Lillian Faderman (Houghton Mifflin); lesbian poetry – The
Dirt She Ate, by Minnie Bruce Pratt (University of Pittsburgh Press);
gay men's poetry (tie) – Middle Earth, by Henri Cole (Farrar,
Straus & Giroux) and Sky Lounge, by Mark Bibbins (Graywolf
Press); transgender – She's Not There, by Jennifer Finney
Boylan (Broadway Books); lgbt studies – Time on Two Crosses,
edited by Devon Carbado and Donald Weise (Cleis Press); gay men's fiction
– Lives of the Circus Animals, by Christopher Bram (William
Morrow); lesbian fiction – Southland, by Nina Revoyr (Akashic
Books).