Sandra Gail Lambert

Sandra Gail Lambert (born ) is an American essayist and fiction writer. She is the author of The River's Memory, A Certain Loneliness (2018), The Sacrifice Zone (2023), and My Withered Legs and Other Essays (2024). With American writer Sarah Einstein, she co-edited Older Queer Voices. A Certain Loneliness was a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography. In 2025, My Withered Legs and Other Essays won the same award and was a finalist for the Judy Grahn Award.

Lambert had polio in her early childhood, which resulted in lifelong physical disablement. She grew up as a military brat but spent most of her childhood in Norway. As of 2023, she lived in Gainesville, Florida with her wife.

A Certain Loneliness (2018) A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir was published by the University of Nebraska Press on September 1, 2018. In a series of 29 essays each varying between one and over ten pages, the memoir draws on Lambert's history of disability, stemming from polio-borne limitations beginning in her early childhood. Lambert shares how she required surgeries and body casts before age four, then spent much of her childhood in Norway in isolation as she wore braces to correct her bones. After returning to the United States during puberty, she realized she was attracted to women attempted to fit in with her peers, though this was impossible. As an adult, she experienced gawking and unwanted comments from strangers. After spending years warping her bones and attempts to use crutches, Lambert began using a wheelchair in her mid-thirties. Kirkus Reviews described the book as "a powerful testimony to the determination and strength necessary to persevere despite assumptions, scrutiny, and societal stigmatization". Nell Beram, writing for Shelf Awareness, described A Certain Loneliness as a travelogue, with Lambert serving as "a sobering guide". While Beram found it easy to worry alongside Lambert, they noted that Lambert "won't become a captive in her wheelchair-friendly Florida home any time soon", while quoting a line from the book regarding a kayaking trip: "'Tomorrow... I'll hurt from this. Today, however, I know who I am.'"

Awards and honors In 2018, Lambert received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Publications