Lesbian author Barrie Jean Borich has just won a Lambda Award for her memoir Body Geographic, a story of “industrial landscapes, urban joy, and riding her bicycle on the mean streets of Chicago”.
Borich is a professor of creative writing at the English Department of Chicago’s DePaul University, where she’s currently setting up the creative nonfiction journal Slag Glass City, which focuses on identity, sustainability and the arts in urban environments.
According to Lambda’s website, the awards “identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year and affirm that LGBT stories are part of the literature of the world. The Awards ceremony has consistently drawn an audience representing every facet of publishing.”
Borich has already won a number of accolades including an ALA Stonewall Book Award for her book My Lesbian Husband. She has been cited in prestigious texts such as Best American Non-Required Reading and Best American Essays. After earning her MFA at the Rainier Writing Workshop, Borich became the very first nonfiction editor of Hamline University’s Water~Stone Review.
She lives in a “gaybourhood” on the shores of Lake Michigan with her spouse Linnea.
