May 29, 2009. Chandra Mayor, author of the short story collection All the Pretty Girls (Conundrum Press, Fall 2008), has won the 21st Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.

In each of these short stories, set against a finely-crafted backdrop of poverty and violence, abuse and hope, Chandra Mayor provides a glimpse into the lives of girls and young women, allowing each to speak in her own voice. These are young women who roll pennies to buy toilet paper and roll their own cigarettes, who watch the mail for the welfare cheque and watch their boyfriends and lovers out of the corners of their eyes. But they also watch their own children play in wading pools, and watch the horizon for other women and other possibilities. Outsiders looking in and insiders looking out, these stories are wreathed in cigarette smoke and blurry with beer. Mayor insists that all girls are pretty girls, and that even amid squalor and chaos, true beauty is achieved through the simple act of reaching for something, anything, more. 

Chandra Mayor is the author of Cherry, which won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award in 2005. Her writing also won the 2004 Manitoba Book Award for Most Promising Writer, and her book of poetry, August Witch, was nominated for four Manitoba Book Awards, and won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for best first book.

According to their website, the Lamba Literary Awards, established by the Lambda Literary Foundation, "seek to recognize excellence in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature. Each year, over 80 judges — writers, booksellers, librarians, journalists — assess the entries in more than 20 categories. This year, 105 finalists representing 72 publishers competed for awards in 22 categories."