ALA announces 2003 Stonewall award winners

Contact: Ellen Bosman



ebosman@iun.edu

ALA News Release


For Immediate Release


January 27, 2003

ALA announces 2003 Stonewall award winners

“Letters to Montgomery Clift” and “How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States” top list

The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2003 Stonewall Book Awards. Noël Alumit, author of “Letters to Montgomery Clift” (MacAdam/Cage Publishing), is the winner of the literature award, and Joanne Meyerowitz, author of “How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States” (Harvard University Press), is the winner of the nonfiction award. The announcement was made January 26 at the ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia. The awards will be presented at the 2003 ALA Annual Conference in Toronto, June 19-25.

“Letters to Montgomery Clift” weaves 1980’s Filipino culture, refugee issues, world policy and politics with personal struggle into a masterful and brilliant first novel. Alumit's writing is terse, unfolding in brief bursts like scenes from a play.

“How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States” is an exhaustively researched historical study. The author succeeds at expertly exploring the subtle distinctions between sexuality and gender in plainspoken language. Meyerowitz, Professor of History at Indiana University, demystifies the confusion and mystery associated with transsexuality.

The Stonewall Award, formerly called the ALA Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered (GLBT) Book Award, was established in 1971 and is the oldest award of its kind.

The literature honor books are:

  • “At Swim Two Boys” by Jamie O’Neill (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
  • “Fingersmith” by Sarah Waters (Riverhead/Penguin-Putnam)
  • “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar Straus and Giroux)
  • “Lantern Bearers” by Ronald Frame (Counterpoint Press)

The nonfiction honor books are:

  • “Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods – My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine” by Noelle Howey (Picador)
  • “Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography” by Jerry Rosco (University of Wisconsin Press)
  • “Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares” Carmen L. Oliveira translated by Neil K. Besner (Rutgers University Press)
  • “Sex Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s” by Neil Miller (Alyson Publications)