Best local author
When Brendan Halpin was 32, his wife was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer. People face illness in different ways, and Halpin dealt with it by writing. It Takes a Worried Man: A Memoir (Villard, 2002) chronicles his life with his sick wife with candor, humor, and honesty. Halpin avoids maudlin sentimentality, focusing on the day-to-day realities and struggles. In Losing My Faculties: A Teacher's Story (Villard, 2003), Halpin relays his experiences as an English teacher in a fancy urban charter school, in a truancy prevention program, and in a poor white town, proving that, although not infallible, teachers are indeed heroes. And in Halpin's first novel, Donorboy (Villard, 2004), teenage Rosalind's two mothers are killed and the sperm donor takes custody. The story of their eventual connection is told through e-mails, instant messaging, and journal entries. For raw humor and a candid approach to life and writing, Phoenix readers pick Halpin as one of Boston's best.

A short bio that introduces an essay by Toni Amato in 2002's Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary describes "hir" as "a working class butch living in Boston. S/he has been writing since s/he was knee-high to a grasshopper and hir work has appeared in," for example, Best Lesbian Erotica anthologies, Food and Other Enemies, and Strange Angels. S/he is also the editor, with Marie Davies, of the Lambda Literary Award-finalist Pinned Down by Pronouns, which includes the work of 75 contributors, primarily from Boston's transgender, gender-queer, and queer community. Amato, a teacher, editor, and writing coach, is also the founder of Write Here Write Now (www.writeherewritenow.org), an organization that offers workshops and peer-critique groups to LGBTI writers. And Amato's efforts and energy don't go unnoticed: Phoenix readers agree s/he's one of the best local writers we've got.