The shortlist has been selected for the first James Patterson and Bookshop.org Prize. Launched last November, the prize celebrates debut authors, who are nominated and chosen by independent booksellers. The grand prize winner receives $15,000, the runner-up receives $10,000. The winner will be announced April 6.
The shortlist:
The Hollow Half by Sarah Aziza
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley
It's Different This Time by Joss Richard
The Lilac People by Milo Todd
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Finalists have been chosen for the 38th annual Publishing Triangle Awards, honoring the best LGBTQ+ books published in 2025. See the 50 finalists here. Winners in the 10 categories will be announced on Thursday, April 16, at a ceremony at the New School in New York City. This year's event, which will be livestreamed, is hosted by poet and activist Emanuel Xavier.
In addition, Chrystos will receive the $3,000 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, which celebrates the recipient's lifetime of work and commitment to fostering LGBTQ+ culture. Chrystos is a two-spirit writer, teacher, artist, lecturer, and activist whose work explores Native American civil rights, social justice, and feminism. Her many awards include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant, and the Audre Lorde International Poetry Competition. She has illustrated many of her book covers.
Mariah Rigg has won the $1,500 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, for an LGBTQ+ writer who has published at least one book but not more than two. She is the author of the short story collection Extinction Capital of the World, winner of the 2026 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature. Her hybrid creative nonfiction chapbook All Hat, No Cattle was published by Bull City Press in 2023.
The $1,000 Torchbearer Award will be presented to The Other Side of Silence (TOSOS). The prize is given to organizations or individuals that strive to awaken, encourage, and support a love of reading, or to stimulate an interest in and an appreciation of LGBTQ literature.
TOSOS opened in 1974 as New York City's first gay professional theater company, founded by a trio of artists: Off-Off-Broadway veteran playwright Doric Wilson, cabaret star Billy Blackwell, and writer-actor-director Peter del Valle, and today is recognized as New York City's oldest LGBTQ+ theater company. In addition to producing full-length plays, the company curates a free play-reading series, the Doric Wilson Playwrights Project.
The Michele Karlsberg Leadership Award will be given to Amy Scholder, a literary editor, publisher, and documentary filmmaker known for her advocacy of works by marginalized and especially LGBTQ+ writers, artists, performers, and activists. This award is funded with the support of Michele Karlsberg, head of the eponymous marketing and publicity firm with an emphasis on members of the LGBTQ+ writing community.
Scholder has produced three award-winning feature films highlighting trans, queer, and feminist topics. She has served as editorial director of the Feminist Press, Verso, Seven Stories, and HIGH RISK Books/Serpent's Tail. The former chair of the board of Lambda Literary, she is an editor-at-large at City Lights Books and serves on the board of directors for the One Institute, Nightboat Books, and the City Lights Foundation.