Creators Julie Delporte, Sarah Leavitt, and Zoe Whittall are among the 12 Canadian and Canada-based writers who have been named finalists of the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards.

The awards, granted in 26 categories and now in their 37th year, celebrate outstanding LGBTQ+ voices in literature. For this year’s sh0rtlists, 80 judges reviewed and deliberated the 1,339 submitted titles.

Nathan Mader has been named a finalist for Bisexual Poetry for The Endless Animal (fine.press).

Cartoonist Julie Delporte is a finalist in the Lesbian Memoir/Biography category for Portrait of a Body (Drawn & Quarterly), as is Toronto-based educator Erica N. Cardwell for Wrong is Not My Name (The Feminist Press).

Cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love (Arsenal Pulp Press) is a finalist in the LGBTQ+ Comics category.

Two Canadian playwrights have been named finalists in the LGBTQ+ Drama category: Nick Green for Casey and Diana (Scirocco Drama/J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing) and Makram Ayache for The Green Line | خطّ التماس, translated by Hiba Sleiman (Playwrights Canada Press), which was also shortlisted for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award.

U.K.-based and Ontario-born writer Maggie Horn’s Noah Frye Gets Crushed (HarperCollins) is a finalist in the LGBTQ+ Middle Grade category.

UBC sociology professor and Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities Amin Ghaziani is a finalist in the LGBTQ+ Nonfiction category for Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution (Princeton University Press).

In the LGBTQ+ Poetry category, Jes Battis’s I Hate Parties (Nightwood Editions) and Zoe Whittall’s No Credit River (Book*hug Press) are two of the five finalists.

And two titles by Canadian writers from another pair of independent Canadian presses have been named finalists in the Transgender Fiction category: All Things Seen and Unseen by R. J. McDaniel (ECW Press) and Yellow Barks Spider by Harman Burns (Radiant Press).

The finalists, as well as the winners of seven sponsored special prizes, will be honoured at a virtual ceremony planned for Oct. 4. The finalists were announced on July 31.