Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues - Posts Tagged "lambda-literary-awards"

I've been flying all day because the Lambda Literary Awards announced their finalists, and my poetry book The Horizontal Poet made the cut! I've been invited to read on June 3 at Bi Lines in New York City and to attend the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony on June 4 at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Avenue) with an after-party at Slate (54 West 21st Street).

The Lammies are the most prestigious LGBT writing awards in the U.S.A. I would love to go to the ceremony, but I'm a disabled woman with a small pension, so it's going to be tricky. If I can sell enough copies of my book between now and May, I think I can afford the trip. If you would like to help me get there, you can order signed copies of my poetry book *The Horizontal Poet* (Zeitgeist Press, 2011), one of this year's finalists, by sending $14 + $2 shipping (in U.S.) per copy via PayPal to Jmsteckel at aol dot com, or via check to Jan Steckel, PO Box 18797/Oakland, CA 94619. :)

For more details about the awards and a complete list of categories and finalists, including a lot of great reads, see
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/foundat...

WOW! What a National Poetry Month it's been. Started out reading a friendly acquaintance's poem at his memorial -- a very moving and beautiful day. Had a three-reading weekend when I read at The Poetry Zone at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Santa Barbara, then got to hear host Suzanne Frost read in two more readings at the California Arts Forum and the Mission Poetry Series, both of which were excellent. Heard poet Michael C. Ford of Los Angeles at the Mission reading -- what a force he is!

Enjoyed reading with Jeanne Wagner at Expressions Gallery in Berkeley on Friday night-- the open mic was just as exciting as the features, with my publisher Bruce Isaacson putting in an appearance with his son Alan Isaacson -- both very fine poets and performers. Co-feature Jeanne Wagner's poetry made fireworks go off behind my eyelids.

Last night was the high point for me -- the Lambda Literary Finalists reading at the San Francisco Public Library. I got to meet Daphne Gottlieb, whom I've admired from afar for years. Her reading about her mother's dying was very moving. Also got to hear my friend Christina Hutchins read from her new book *The Stranger Dissolves* (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2011). I was scared to follow both of them, but I felt my poetry was well received. Such a wonderful, energizing event! Enjoyed meeting the other SF finalists as well as Ellery Washington(Lambda Literary Foundation Board Member), Tony Valenzuela (Executive Director of Lambda) and Karen Sundheim (Program Manager for the San Francisco Public Library). Everyone was so kind, and the event was so well executed.

Now I get to rest a bit before going to my friends Judy Wells and Dale Jensen's 10th Anniversary Reading at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts this Saturday evening in Alameda. If you live in the SF Bay Area, this is one reading not to miss.

I'll be one of several readers on May 12 at Works in Progress, a women's reading in the Piedmont neighborhood of Oakland. Irina Rivkin will be singing her wonderful Russian lesbian looping folk-rock. Write me for details if you're a woman in the SF Bay Area and you want to go. So much great queer energy! Reminds me why I moved back here.

After that, it's off to New York City the first week in June, where I'll visit the Ginsberg estate offices, read in Bi Lines at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village with the other Bi finalists for the Lammies on June 3, and attend the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony at the Graduate Center, CUNY, on June 4. Heavens. What does one wear to the Oscars of LGBT writing?

I'm delighted to announce that my first full-length poetry book, The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011), recently won a Lambda Literary Award. The "Lammies" are the premier annual international awards for LGBT writing.

While they were announcing the award before mine in Manhattan two weeks ago, a beautiful blonde woman said something to me that I couldn't hear. I didn't realize until she was introduced onstage that she was our own Amy King, moderator of the Goodreads Poetry group! Luckily, I got to shake her hand and thank her when I went onstage to accept my award. What an honor.

The Horizontal Poet is now available on Amazon and at the following fine independent bookstores: The Laurel Bookstore in Oakland, California; The Beat Museum in San Francisco, California; Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara, California; and Bluestockings in New York City.

You can also order the book directly from its indie publisher Zeitgeist Books at www.zeitgeist-press.com. If you prefer a signed copy, you can order one from me for $14 plus $2 shipping ($16 total) as a check or money order sent to Jan Steckel/PO Box 18797/Oakland, CA 94619, or for $16 sent to me via PayPal to Jmsteckel at aol dot com. Be sure to include your mailing address and to whom you want the book signed.

The cocktail reception before the Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony was a gas. I knew I should be running around trying to meet publishers or agents, but I was mesmerized by all the different sparkly eyeliners people were wearing. I got interviewed for some sort of promotional video for the Lambda Literary Foundation and tried to say all the right things.

Just before the awards ceremony started, someone kicked my husband out of his seat in the auditorium so Kate Millett could sit in it. Of course, he was happy to give it to her. I lay on the floor in a little alcove to the left of the stage where they had put me, and nearly got tripped over by Armistead Maupin. Kate Clinton shook my hand, and I decided never to wash it again. In her remarks, she said that the Republicans wanted to shrink government down small enough to fit inside her uterus.

When they announced that The Horizontal Poet had won an award, I swore softly to myself in shock and mounted the stairs to the stage. They had projected a thirty foot image of the book's cover on a screen behind me, so there I was stammering in front of a Brobdingnagian image of my seminude buxom self while four hundred people applauded. Except now I'm forty pounds lighter and have chopped off my hair, so I looked like a skinny-assed white boy in a black leather jacket and glasses. It was kind of like one of those dreams where you forget to wear any clothes to school.

I thanked all the requisite people and staggered off the stage into the arms of a six-foot-tall Olympian goddess, her bare shoulders rising from her brocade peplum bodice like Venus on the half-shell: my heroine Susie Bright. Then a long clinch with my husband Hew. The rest of the program had an air of unreality, but since the bisexuals and the transgendered people usually come last at queer events, there wasn't too long to wait. Then tons of hugs, congratulations, photos, handshakes, more awkward thanks, and into the cool night air.

I have two bags full of swag, mostly books by other queer writers that I'm really looking forward to reading. I have an enormously dense hunk of glass in the shape of a book, engraved with the relevant particulars. If I ever win another of these, I can use them for bookends. I have the knowledge that I really moved those judges with words on a page, without any junkets or publicist or connections. I know what my beautiful hunk of glass is. It's a license to write.