| Year | Author | Work | Result | Ref. |
|---|
| 1994 | Josyane Savigneau | Marguerite Yourcenar | Winner | [2] |
|---|
| Phyllis Burke | Family Values | Finalist | [2] |
| Jewelle Gomez | Forty-Three Septembers |
| Rose Gladney (editor) | How Am I To Be Heard: Letters of Lillian Smith |
| David Sweetman | Mary Renault |
| 1995 | Renate Stendhal (editor) | Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures | Winner | [3] |
|---|
| Mab Segrest | Memoir of a Race Traitor | Finalist | [3] |
| Elizabeth Bishop | One Art: Letters |
| ColonelMargarethe Cammermeyer andChris Fisher | Serving in Silence |
| Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz | The Power and the Passion of M. Carey Thomas |
| 1996 | Erica Fischer | Aimee & Jaguar | Winner | [4] |
|---|
| Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch | And Say Hi to Joyce | Finalist | [4] |
| Susan E. Cayliff | Babe |
| Claudia Brenner with Hannah Ashley | Eight Bullets |
| Dorothy Allison | Two or Three Things I Know for Sure |
| 1997 | Doris Grumbach | Life in a Day | Winner | [5] |
|---|
| Candace Gingrich | Accidental Activist | Finalist | [5] |
| Torie Osborn | Coming Home to America |
| Helen Sheehy | Eva Le Gallienne |
| Honor Moore | The White Blackbird |
| 1998 | Barbara Wilson | Blue Windows: a Christian Science Childhood | Winner | [6] |
|---|
| Margot Peters | May Sarton: a Biography | Finalist | [6] |
| Kim Chernin | My Life as a Boy |
| Daphne Scholinski and Jane Meredith Adams | The Last Time I Wore a Dress |
| Hermione Lee | Virginia Woolf |
| 1999 | Alison Bechdel | The Indelible Alison Bechdel; Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out for | Winner | [7] |
|---|
| Joan Nestle | A Fragile Union | Finalist | [7] |
| Rodger Streitmatter | Empty Without You |
| Sally Cline | Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John |
| Kate Summerscale | The Queen of Whale Cay |
| 2000 | Diana Souhami | The Trials of Radclyffe Hall | Winner | [8] |
|---|
| Kay Turner | Baby Precious Always Shines | Finalist | [8] |
| Blanche Wiesen Cook | Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2: 1933–1938 |
| Barrie Jean Borich | My Lesbian Husband |
| Karla Jay | Tales of the Lavender Menace |
| 2001 | Judith Barrington | Lifesaving | Winner | [9] |
|---|
| Amber Hollibaugh | My Dangerous Desires | Finalist | [9] |
| June Jordan | Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood |
| Carole Maso | The Room Lit by Roses |
| Joan Schenkar | Truly Wilde |
| 2007 | Alison Bechdel | Fun Home | Winner | [10] |
|---|
| Barbara Sjoholm | Incognito Street | Finalist | [10] |
| Bettina Aptheker | Intimate Politics |
| Hilary Carlip | Queen of the Oddballs |
| Catherine Friend | Hit by a Farm |
| 2008 | Nicola Griffith | And Now We Are Going to Have a Party | Winner | [11][12] |
|---|
| Marusya Bociurkiw | Comfort Food for Breakups | Finalist | [12] |
| Amy Hoffman | An Army of Ex-Lovers |
| Janet Malcolm | Two Lives: Gertrude & Alice |
| Jacqueline Taylor | Waiting for the Call |
| 2009 | Maureen Seaton | Sex Talks to Girls: A Memoir | Winner | [13] |
|---|
| Susan Griffin | Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy | Finalist | [13] |
| Thea Hillman | Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) |
| Joanne Passet | Sex Variant Woman |
| Abbe Smith | Case of a Lifetime |
| 2010 | Joan Schenkar | The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith | Winner | [14] |
|---|
| Alix Dobkin | My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement | Finalist | [14] |
| Ariel Schrag | Likewise: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag |
| Mary Cappello | Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life |
| Terry Galloway | Mean Little deaf Queer |
| 2011 | Barbara Hammer | Hammer!: Making Movies Out of Sex and Life | Winner (tie) | [15] |
|---|
| Julie Marie Wade | Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures |
| Katherine A. Briccetti | Blood Strangers: A Memoir | Finalist | [16] |
| Chely Wright | Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer |
| Amie Klempnauer Miller | She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood |
| 2012 | Jeanne Córdova | When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution | Winner | [17] |
|---|
| Karleen Pendleton Jimenez | How to Get a Girl Pregnant | Finalist | |
| Catherine Friend | Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet | |
| Julie Marie Wade | Small Fires: Essays | [18] |
| Jane Rule | Taking My Life | |
| 2013 | Jeanette Winterson | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | Winner | [19][20] |
|---|
| Judy Grahn | A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet | Finalist | [19] |
| Lisa Cohen | All We Know: Three Lives |
| Alison Bechdel | Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama |
| Luisita Lopez Torregrosa | Before the Rain |
| Sarah Schulman | The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination |
| 2014 | Barrie Jean Borich | Body Geographic | Winner | [21][22] |
|---|
| Donna Minkowitz | Growing up Golem | Finalist | [21] |
| Annie Lanzillotto | L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir |
| Caroline Paul andWendy MacNaughton | Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology |
| 2015 | Alethia Jones andVirginia Eubanks, withBarbara Smith | Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith | Winner | [23] |
|---|
| Lynette Loeppky | Cease – a memoir of love, loss and desire | Finalist | [24] |
| Kelly Cogswell | Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger |
| Ariel Gore | The End of Eve |
| Terry Mutchler | Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America |
| 2016 | Kate Carroll de Gutes | Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear | Winner | [25][26][27] |
|---|
| Cat Cora | Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef’s Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness | Finalist | [28] |
| Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | Dirty River |
| Carrie Brownstein | Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl |
| Allison Gruber | You’re Not Edith |
| 2017 | Gloria Joseph | ody, Undone: Living On After Great Pain | Winner | [29] |
|---|
| Ma-Nee Chacaby | A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder | Finalist | [29] |
| Tig Notaro | I’m Just a Person |
| Joanne Passet | Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier |
| 2018 | Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich | The Fact of a Body | Winner | [30][31] |
|---|
| Melissa Febos | Abandon Me: Memoirs | Finalist | [32] |
| Eileen Myles | Afterglow |
| Renate Stendhal | Kiss Me Again, Paris: A Memoir |
| Anne-christine d'Adesky | The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris |
| 2019 | Zahra Patterson | Chronology | Winner | [33] |
|---|
| Barrie Jean Borich | Apocalypse, Darling | Finalist | [34] |
| Julia Van Haaften | Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography |
| Sandra Gail Lambert | A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir |
| Marusya Bociurkiw | Food Was Her Country: The Memoir of a Queer Daughter |
| Sarah Viren | MINE: Essays |
| Esther Newton | My Butch Career: A Memoir |
| Lindsay Nixon | nîtisânak |
| 2020 | Samra Habib | We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir | Winner | [35][36] |
|---|
| Benjamin Moser | Sontag: Her Life and Work | Finalist | [37][38] |
| Saidiya Hartman | Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval |
| Edie Windsor withJoshua Lyon | A Wild and Precious Life |
| Jaquira Díaz | Ordinary Girls |
| Julia Koets | The Rib Joint: A Memoir In Essays |
| T Kira Madden | Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls |
| Elissa Altman | Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing |
| 2021 | Jenn Shapland | My Autobiography of Carson McCullers | Winner | [39][40][41] |
|---|
| Tania De Rozario | And The Walls Come Crumbling Down | Finalist | [42] |
| Tana Wojczuk | Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity |
| Nina Kennedy | Practicing for Love: A Memoir |
| Lori Soderlind | The Change: My Great American, Postindustrial, Midlife Crisis Tour |
| 2022 | Sophie Santos | The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had) | Winner | [43][44] |
|---|
| Grace Perry | The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture | Finalist | [45] |
| Leslie Cohen | The Audacity of a Kiss: Love, Art, and Liberation |
| Jonathan Ned Katz | The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams |
| Adele Bertei | Why Labelle Matters |
| 2023 | Kathryn Schulz | Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness | Winner | [46] |
|---|
| Raquel Gutiérrez | Brown Neon | Finalist | [47] |
| Putsata Reang | Ma and Me |
| Chris Belcher | Pretty Baby: A Memoir |
| Neema Avashia | Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place |
| 2024 | Amelia Possanza | Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives | Winner | [48] |
|---|
| Lamya H | Hijab Butch Blues | Finalist | [49] |
| Vi Khi Nao | Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche |
| Sarah Viren | To Name the Bigger Lie |
| Lynnée Denise | Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters |