When the 34th Annual Lambda Literary Awards shortlists were announced on March 15, many Canadian authors were among the finalists, including Ivan Coyote, Hiromi Goto, Alix Ohlin, and Basil Sylvester and Kevin Sylvester. The annual awards are presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation to the best LGBTQ books of the year. The 2022 winners will be announced at a virtual awards ceremony on June 11.

Canadian authors and Canadian-published titles were nominated in the following categories:

Transgender Nonfiction

•  Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures, Ivan Coyote (McClelland & Stewart)

Transgender Fiction

•  A Natural History of Transition, Callum Angus (Metonymy Press)

LGBTQ Nonfiction

•  Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water, Kazim Ali (Goose Lane Editions; Milkweed in U.S.)

Bisexual Fiction

•  We Want What We Want, Alix Ohlin (House Anansi Press)
•  Blue-Skinned Gods, SJ Sindu (Soho Press)

Lesbian Poetry

•  The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak, Grace Lau (Guernica Editions)

LGBTQ Anthology

•  Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, ed. (Arsenal Pulp Press)

LGBTQ Children’s/Middle Grade

•  The Fabulous Zed Watson!, Basil Sylvester and Kevin Sylvester (HarperCollins Publishers)
•  Love, Violet, Charlotte Sullivan Wild and Charlene Chua, illus. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR)

LGBTQ Comics

•  Shadow Life, Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, ill. (First Second)
•  Stone Fruit, Lee Lai (Fantagraphics Books)
•  Our Work Is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer & Trans Resistance, Syan Rose (Arsenal Pulp Press)

LGBTQ Speculative Fiction

• Phototaxis, Olivia Tapiero; Kit Schluter, trans. (Nightboat Books)

LGBTQ Mystery

• Bath Haus, P.J. Vernon (Doubleday/Penguin Random House)

LGBTQ Erotica

• Queer Werewolves Destroy Capitalism: Smutty Stories, MJ Lyons (Microcosm Publishing)

LGBTQ Studies

• Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific, Howard Chiang (Columbia University Press)