ShelfEvidentStonewall Book Award
2025 Winner
2025 Shortlist & Longlist
Complete History
2020s
- 2025Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery
- 2024Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir
- 2023Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist
- 2022Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir — Akwaeke Emezi
- 2021The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How 52 Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium
- 2020How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir — Saeed Jones
2010s
- 2019Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African American Writers
- 2018Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community
- 2017How to Survive a Plague — David France
- 2016Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial
- 2015Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims
- 2014Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous, Gender Creative Son
- 2013For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home
- 2012A Queer History of the United States
- 2011Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature — Emma Donoghue
- 2010Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America
2000s
- 2009Light Fell — Evan Fallenberg
- 2008The Teahouse Fire — Ellis Avery
- 2007Grief — Andrew Holleran
- 2006Babyji — Abha Dawesar
- 2005The Master — Colm Tóibín
- 2004The Book of Salt — Monique Truong
- 2003Letters to Montgomery Clift — Noel Alumit
- 2002The Laramie Project — Moisés Kaufman and Tectonic Theatre Project
- 2001Affinity — Sarah Waters
- 2000Po Man's Child — Marci Blackman
1990s
- 1999The Hours — Michael Cunningham
- 1998Working Parts — Lucy Jane Bledsoe
- 1997Hood — Emma Donoghue
- 1996Dream Boy — Jim Grimsley
- 1995Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence — Marion Dane Bauer
- 1994Stone Butch Blues — Leslie Feinberg
- 1993Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry — Essex Hemphill
- 1992Halfway Home — Paul Monette
- 1991Crime Against Nature — Minnie Bruce Pratt
- 1990Eighty-Sixed — David B. Feinberg
About the Stonewall Book Award
The Stonewall Book Award is the American Library Association's oldest honor recognizing exceptional books with significant content related to the LGBTQ+ experience. Founded in 1971 as the Gay Book Award by the Social Responsibilities Round Table of ALA, the award underwent several name changes—Gay and Lesbian Book Award, Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Book Award—before adopting the Stonewall name in 2002. Since 1986, it has been an official ALA award administered by the Rainbow Round Table (formerly the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table).
The award currently includes four categories: the Barbara Gittings Literature Award (fiction/literary works), the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award, and the Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children's and Young Adult Literature Award (split into separate Children's and Young Adult subcategories in 2023). A poetry sub-category of the literature award was added in 2023. Honor Books (finalists) have been publicly named since 1990.
Winners receive a plaque and $1,000 and are honored at the ALA Annual Conference each June or July. Past literature award winners include Carolina de Robertis's Cantoras (2020), Zeyn Joukhadar's The Thirty Names of Night (2021), Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland (2022), Rachel M. Harper's The Other Mother (2023), KB Brookins's Freedom House (2024), and Griffin Hansbury's Some Strange Music Draws Me In (2025). The award is the most visible prize in LGBTQ+ literature in the United States.
Frequently Asked Questions
- The Stonewall Book Award is the ALA's oldest honor for LGBTQ+ literature, given annually for exceptional books with significant content related to the LGBTQ+ experience.
- As of 2023, there are four main categories: the Barbara Gittings Literature Award, the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award, the Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children's Literature Award, and the Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Young Adult Literature Award. A poetry sub-category of the literature award was also introduced in 2023.
- Honor Books are runners-up in each category, comparable to finalists. They have been publicly named since 1990 and are termed 'Honor Books' from 2001.
- The Rainbow Round Table of the American Library Association selects winners and honor books through a committee of ALA members.
- Yes. Winners in each category receive $1,000 and a plaque, presented at the ALA Annual Conference.
- The award was renamed the Stonewall Book Award in 2002, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall uprising that catalyzed the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
- Yes. Both contemporary fiction and nonfiction, as well as historical works, are eligible as long as the content relates significantly to the LGBTQ+ experience.