Publishing Triangle Honours Leading LGBTQ+ Books of 2025 in New York

At the 38th annual Publishing Triangle awards at The New School in New York, the organisation honoured leading LGBTQ+ books published in 2025, along with authors, editors, and cultural institutions working in queer literature. As Gay City News noted, the evening was shaped by the idea that every such book can function as an act of resistance.

The group officially announced winners in ten competitive categories. Special honours went to writer and activist Chrystos for lifetime achievement, editor and publisher Amy Scholder for leadership, New York theatre TOSOS with the Torchbearer Award, and Mariah Rigg as an emerging queer literary voice.

The winning books covered a wide range of forms and subjects. Drought by Scott Alexander Hess follows a withdrawn man who arrives at a Kentucky tobacco farm after his uncle’s death and begins uncovering an old crime. Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu is a novel about the long friendship between two young women who move from bleak childhoods into the New York art world of the 1990s. Beyond the Lesbian Vampire by Sam Tabet studies how contemporary queer horror reworks the figure of the “violent lesbian.” Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs is a biography of James Baldwin told through his intimate and creative relationships. The Boy Kingdom / El reino de los varones by Achy Obejas is a bilingual poetry collection about queer motherhood, two sons, and multilingual family life.

The remaining winners show how broadly Publishing Triangle understands queer literature. I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken is a sequence of prose poems about memory, grief, and recovery after a stroke. Local Woman by Jzl Jmz follows a Black trans woman in Portland through protest, disaster, romance, and the search for autonomy. Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen is a mystery about missing Mattachine Society members in 1950s Los Angeles. We Can Never Leave by H. E. Edgmon is a young adult fantasy about five young creatures left behind after the sudden disappearance of their travelling community. What is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution by John Birdsall traces how queer people used food, restaurants, and shared spaces to build culture and solidarity across the twentieth century.

In Gay City News’s account, many speeches returned to the same point: queer literature matters today not only as representation but also as a defence of community, memory, and the right to speak publicly. The ceremony ended with an in memoriam segment for writers and activists lost in 2025 and early 2026, including Edmund White.

The Publishing Triangle Awards are annual U.S. prizes for notable queer books published the previous year. They recognise fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young adult literature, and trans writing.