After a period of decline around the turn of the millennium, NLA-I has become more active again and runs a series of awards for fiction and non-fiction writing.

[1] When the NLA was formed, prosecutions against sadomasochistic media and even individuals who practiced it consensually and in private, such as in the 1990 UK Operation Spanner case, had increased.

Organisations such as the National Leather Association were a response to this environment, and the NLA played a leading role in raising funds for the Spanner defendants.

Burdened by the political infighting of Dallas, the SSCA failed to gain support and merged with the NLA, the only functioning, national BDSM organization.

[6] The merger with the SSCA sparked a tremendous increase in the NLA's membership, which by the end of 1991 had grown to 827 members scattered across 46 US states and parts of Canada.

At its peak, the NLA (later NLAI) had chapters in every major American city including New York, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles, as well as Vancouver and Toronto in Canada.

Attendance topped 700 and LIL became the premier event for SM education and organizing and attracted the community's best-known speakers and leaders.

Chuck Higgins led the NLA's best known initiative of these years: raising funds for the appeal of the Operation Spanner defendants, 18 British men convicted and imprisoned for engaging in consensual SM activities.

NLA members demonstrated outside the British consulate in Chicago and spearheaded American fundraising activities that raised more than $50,000 and paid more than half the Operation Spanner defendants' legal expenses.

Lacking leadership and direction, the organization neared collapse over the next two years, but its local chapters kept it afloat, particularly those in Columbus, Dallas, New England, and Oklahoma City.

[11] Past recipients include, among others, Laura Antoniou, Gloria Brame, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Jack Fritscher, Gayle Rubin, David Stein, Cecilia Tan, Tristan Taormino and L M Somerton.

The categories are: Chéri Hérouard - Realism, Clovis Trouille - Surrealism, Gene Bilbrew - Animation, Aubrey Beardsley - Abstract, and Michael Kirwan - Expressionism.