The Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature is a prestigious literary honor dedicated to celebrating and promoting the creative works of transgender and gender-variant authors. Inaugurated in the spring of 2016, as The Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature, this award recognizes outstanding work from the gender-nonconforming community.
Renamed in memory of Leslie Feinberg, a pioneering activist and author known for Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, and the groundbreaking novel Stone Butch Blues, this award recognizes outstanding contributions to the world of literature that explore themes of gender identity, diversity, and the lived experiences of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals.
Established to foster inclusivity and representation in literature, the award seeks to highlight the importance of transgender voices and perspectives in storytelling. It acknowledges a wide range of literary genres, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and more, showcasing the richness and diversity of transgender and gender-variant literary talent.
This award stands as a beacon of support for authors who strive to break new ground, challenge societal norms, and inspire change through their written words, honoring Leslie Feinberg’s legacy of advocacy and creativity. The winner receives a prize of $1000, which is underwritten by Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler.
Each year’s finalists were published the preceding year, and the finalists and winners are determined by a panel of judges appointed by the Publishing Triangle’s awards committee.
In the list below, finalists are presented in alphabetical order by book title. Bold type and a triangle
indicate winners.
2023
Against Heaven, by Kemi Alabi (Graywolf)
Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, by Cecilia Gentili (Little Puss Press)
stemmy things, by imogen xtian smith (Nightboat Books)
Togetherness, by Wo Chan (Nightboat Books)
2022
Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters (One World)
A Dream of a Woman, by Casey Plett (Arsenal Pulp Press)
The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes, by Zoë Playdon (Scribner)
A Symmetry, by Ari Banias (W. W. Norton)
2021
The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead)
My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, by S. Brook Corfman (Fordham University Press)
Trans Care, by Hil Malatino (University of Minnesota Press)
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel (Nightboat Books)
2020
Disintegrate/Dissociate, by Arielle Twist (Arsenal Pulp Press)
I Hope We Choose Love, by Kai Cheng Thom (Arsenal Pulp Press)
The Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian), by Hazel Jane Plante (Metonymy Press)
We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961–1991, edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma (Nightboat Books)
2019
Confessions of the Fox, by Jordy Rosenberg (One World/Random House)
Holy Wild, by Gwen Benaway (Bookthug Press)
Some Animal, by Ely Shipley (Nightboat Books)
The Soul of the Stranger, by Joy Ladin (Brandeis University Press)
2018
Don’t Call Us Dead, by Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)
A Place Called No Homeland, by Kai Cheng Thom (Arsenal Pulp Press)
Prayers for My 17th Chromosome, by Amir Rabiyah (Sibling Rivalry Press)
Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton (The MIT Press)
2017
Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory, by Qwo-Li Driskill (University of Arizona Press)
Chelate, by Jay Besemer (Brooklyn Arts Press)
Even This Page Is White, by Vivek Shraya (Arsenal Pulp Press)
A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder, by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louise Plummer (University of Manitoba Press)
2016
The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press)
Debridement, by Corrina Bain (Great Weather for Media)
The Middle Notebookes, by Nathanaël (Nightboat Books)
Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities, by Jackson Wright Schultz (Dartmouth College Press)