Last week I blogged about the new awards that Lambda Literary was taking on, and how the eligibility criteria were LG inclusive, but not really LGBT. The original wording was as follows:

LGBT authors will be recognized with three awards marking stages of a writer’s career: the Betty Berzon Debut Fiction Award (to one gay man and one lesbian), the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize (to one male-identified and one female-identified author), and the Pioneer Award (to one male-identified and one female-identified individual or group).

That wording has now been revised as follows:

LGBT authors will be recognized with three awards given annually during the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony (each to a male-identified and female-identified individual) marking stages of a writer’s career: the Debut Fiction Award (to one queer man and one queer woman), the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize (to one male-identified and one female-identified author), and the Pioneer Award (to one male-identified and one female-identified individual or group).

This is much more inclusive. Of course it is by no means perfect, as it sticks rigidly to the idea of the gender binary and thus excludes anyone who does not identify as male or female. There may also be some people who have issues with the word “queer”. But it is progress, and to be honest it is a lot more than I thought we would get. I suspect that we have Nicola Griffith to thank for applying pressure on the Lambda board, and possibly other supportive folks as well.

So, thank you Lambda for listening and acting. Now we need to have a conversation about this gender binary thing. Would you like to talk some more?