ALA Book Awards (2022): Stonewall Awards

Among the awards presented are the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award are presented to English language books that have exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQIA+ experience. The award is administered by the Gay Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT).

Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award

• Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games 
  In The Queer Games Avant-Garde, Bonnie Ruberg presents twenty interviews with twenty-two queer video game developers whose radical, experimental, vibrant, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games. Speaking with insight and candor about their creative practices as well as their politics and passions, these influential and innovative game makers tell stories about their lives and inspirations, the challenges they face, and the ways they understand their places within the wider terrain of video game culture. Their insights go beyond typical conversations about LGBTQ representation in video games or how to improve “diversity” in digital media. Instead, they explore queer game-making practices, the politics of queer independent video games, how queerness can be expressed as an aesthetic practice, the influence of feminist art on their work, and the future of queer video games and technology. These engaging conversations offer a portrait of an influential community that is subverting and redefining the medium of video games by placing queerness front and center.

Barbara Gittings Literature Award

• The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

  “The Thirty Names of Night” tells the story of a closeted Syrian American nonbinary character in his early 20s in New York City who is haunted by his mother’s ghost and the mystery of a famous painter who painted the birds of New York City. The wauthor weaves two stories: One is of the main character, who is a young and nonbinary and who sheds his given name for a new one, Nadir. As Nadir leans into his gender identity, which is not strictly male nor female, he recruits friends to find the painter's long-lost masterpiece. All while the ghost of his mother haunts him, interrupting his thoughts with cutting glances and sympathetic looks.  The second story revolves around the famed and mysterious Syrian American painter, Laila, who came to the United States in the 1930s with her family to the now-nonexistent neighborhood of “Little Syria” in Manhattan. Nadir finds Laila’s diary and learns from it the story of her immigration, first love, second love and all the wonderful birds that fly in and out of her life. And to his surprise, Laila’s story is interconnected with many of his own family's secrets and holds clues to a famous missing painting of a legendary bird.

As a reminder: if Miami's copy of a book is checked out, Miami affiliated students, faculty and staff may request another copy through OhioLINK or SearchOhio.

• Queer Games Avant Garde - On order for the Miami University Libraries and can be requested through OhioLINK.
• The Thirty Names of Night - Is available electronically from the Miami University Libraries (1 simultaneous user).

• ALANews Announcement
• Queer Games Avant Garde
  • Author website (Bonnie 'Bo' Ruberg)
  • Author presentation
  • Book review (Information & Culture)
• The Thirty Names of Night
  • Author website (Zeyn Joukhadar)
  • Author interview (NPR)
  • Book review (Kirkus Reviews)
  • An essay by the author