The Amber Hollibaugh Award for LGBTQ+ Social Justice Writing honors a nonfiction book that addresses issues such as economic injustice, with particular attention to queer youth and adult sex workers. Works exploring these or related topics—especially those grounded in lived experience—are eligible for consideration. The award carries a $1,000 prize, with the winner selected by a panel of judges.
Amber Hollibaugh previously won the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction in 2001 for My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home.
In the list below, finalists are presented in alphabetical order by book.
2026
Jesusland by Joelle Kidd (ECW Press)
Radical Unlearning by Lewis Raven Wallace (Beacon Press)
The Rainbow Ain’t Never Been Enuf by Kaila Adia Story (Beacon Press)
Semi Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything by Alyson Stoner (St. Martin’s Press)
What is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution
by John Birdsall (W. W. Norton & Company)
2025
Come By Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast, by Neesha Powell-Ingabire (Hub City Press)
How to Fuck Like a Girl: Essays, by Vera Blossom (Dopamine Books)
How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability and Doom, by Johanna Hedva (Zando-Hillman Grad Books)
Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy and Borders, by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal (Tiny Reparations Books)