Philly Writer Wins IPPY Award for Gay Romance Novel Unbroken


A while back I told you about Philly writer Larry Benjamin, whose 2013 novel Unbroken is nominated for one of this year’s Lambda Literary Awards in the Gay Romance category. Well, he’ll be going into the early-June awards ceremony a winner, because last week it was announced that the book scored gold in the LGBT fiction category at the 2014 Independent Publisher Book awards. The awards — known as IPPYs — “are designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers.”

Unbroken is a semi-autobiographical novel that concerns the 40-year relationship between Jose and Lincoln. In March, Benjamin told me the story was born from a tweet he responded to that asked people to recall the moment they knew they were LGBT. His response? “I was 12 & in 7th grade. He was the new kid. His name was Jose. He walked into 4th period music, smiled & changed everything,”

Benjamin has been traveling with the book recently. On April 29th he took part in the 26th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Finalist Readings at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City. And you can catch him right here in Philly this Thursday, May 15th, when he joins six other Lambda Awards finalists for a reading at Giovanni’s Room. Among those taking part is Phil Tiemeyer, author of Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight AttendantsHow Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir‘s Amber Dawn, and Michael Klein, author of The Talking Day.

For more info on the reading — which will be one of the last at Giovanni’s Room — go here.