SLS alum Michael Nava recently won a 2020 Lambda Literary Award in the gay mystery category for his 2019 novel, Carved in Bone—the latest in a series that features Henry Rios, an openly gay Latino criminal defense lawyer who works in Los Angeles. Nava was inspired to create Rios because of a comment by author Toni Morrison about writing books that she could have read when she was growing up. Nava’s Henry Rios series encompasses nine titles, including The Little Death, the first of the series that was published in 1986.

Established in 1988, the Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the “Lammys,” are given for content relevant to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer lives. The Lambda Literary Foundation states that its mission is “to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians—the whole literary community.”