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Reading Gay Romance for the Lambda Book Awards
March 9, 2007
Its gotten so bad that even when I close my eyes I can still see hunky gay boys in bulging speedos, hyper-masculine groping each other on the downlow and money exchanging hands for furtive sexual favors. No, it's not casual Fridays at Publishers Weekly. I'm actually a judge in the gay romance category for the upcoming 19th annual Lambda Literary Awards.
In the past, I've judged in various categories, so this year I left the decision of what category I'd be reading in the hands of others. When I was assigned "gay romance," I thought, I really need to remember to be careful what I don't ask for.
At
PW, we go out of our way to give the books we review the best shot at a positive review by assigning mysteries to fans of mysteries and biographies to those who enjoy memoirs, etc. After all, the public who reads the finished books will already be fans of that specific genre, so it would be wrong of us to assign a regency romance to an espionage fan.
I felt bad, because I'm not really a fan of romance novels--gay or straight. So, when I heard that I was about to get 16 gay romances to trudge through, I was a little less than enthused. It could have been worse, the category of lesbian romance had 31 titles for judges to read and trim down to a final five nominees. (This year, there was a record number of books hoping to snag a Lambda nomination: 147 publishers nominated 381 titles in 25 categories.)
When the books arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how elastic the term "romance" was in this category. Sure, there was one regency romance (with a cover that would keep it out of WalMart, but with content that wouldn't bring a blush to Barbara Cartland's cheeks) and a couple sexcapades with paper-thin characterizations, but for the most part I was getting over my fear of the genre. Don't get me wrong, I didn't go all soft on the category. It was pretty easy to whittle the pack down to roughly a half-dozen titles and then work with the other judges in this category to decide on the final five nominees.
Now that the final nominees have been announced (and will be presented during the BEA in New York City), I wish I'd been assigned the lesbian memoir/biography category because I can't believe that William Mann's superbly written and researched definitive biography of Katharine Hepburn, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, somehow didn't make the cut. I thought it was not only the best biography of the year, but demonstrated how determination to find real facts behind decades of mythmaking could create an illuminating and surprising biography of someone we all thought we knew but didn't. Happily, my second-favorite book of 2006, Joe Keenan's deliriously funny novel, My Lucky Star, did earn a spot in the gay humor category. I hope he wins and that he won't make us wait another 15 years for a fourth novel.
Posted by Kevin Howell on March 9, 2007 | Comments (6)
