LAIS, American studies professor a finalist for LGBT writing award
Lima and Felice Picano’s anthology, Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), is nominated for “LGBT Anthology,” one of 24 categories. According to Lambda Literary, there are 119 finalists for the “Lammys” from more than 600 nominated titles.
Lima, who teaches in the American studies and Latin American and Iberian studies departments, said that as a scholar in U.S. Latino literary and cultural history, as well as gender and sexuality studies, he began to see “stark parallels between patterns of state discrimination” against Latinos and LGBT communities.
Lima said he compiled the book “to make inroads into a broader national conversation about what constitutes American literature, what it means to be an ‘American’ writer, and how aesthetic judgments and themes in literature are never disinterested. Ultimately, I wanted to create an archive, in a single book, of some of the best Latino and Latina LGBT writing.”
Lima and Picano received hundreds of submissions from established and emerging gay and lesbian Latino writers for nearly four years. They selected entries based how the piece addressed the Latino LGBT experience, whether it was entertaining, the quality of the writing and whether it was moving and emotionally resilient.
“We are just thrilled,” he said of the nomination. “Just the visibility that the Lambda Literary Foundation’s nomination provides creates greater access to the themes and topics we wanted to bring to a broad reading public.”