This is your semi-regular roundup of new and recent awards garnered by Texas books and authors since our last roundup. 

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER AND FINALISTS 

This year's Pulitzer Prize announcement brought prestigious accolades to three talented Texas authors. The Lone Star Literary Life community congratulates these and all the other award-winning authors! 

Cristina Rivera Garza won the 2024 Pulitzer for Memoir or Autobiography for LILIANA’S INVINCIBLE SUMMER: A SISTER’S SEARCH FOR JUSTICE. The committee’s praise described the book as “a genre-bending account of the author’s 20-year-old sister, murdered by a former boyfriend, that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism, and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss.”  

Two Texans were also recognized as Pulitzer Prize finalists: 

Biography--Tracy Daugherty, LARRY MCMURTRY: A LIFE  

History--Elliott West, CONTINENTAL RECKONING: THE AMERICAN WEST IN THE AGE OF EXPANSION  

AUTHOR AWARDS and ACCOLADES 

TO LOVE A TEXAS RANGER by Linda Broday picked up First Place in the Historical Romance Category in the American Legacy Book Awards. 

BECAUSE I LOVED YOU by Donnaldson Brown won the silver IBPA Ben Franklin Award for general fiction from the Independent Book Publishers Association. 

James Lee Burke won the Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. 

Linda Castillo won the G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award from the Mystery Writers of America for AN EVIL HEART, as well as the Edgar Award for Short Story for “Hallowed Ground.” 

THE GHOSTS OF RANCHO ESPANTO by Adrianna Cuevas won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile. 

S.J. Dahlstrom's middle-grade series HEARTWOOD MOUNTAIN won the Western Heritage Award in the Juvenile Book category from the National Cowboy Museum. 

Ben Fountain won the prestigious Joyce Carol Oates Prize for his novel DEVIL MAKES THREE. The award has a $50,000 prize and a brief fall residency at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Thomas Goodman garnered the Grand Prize in the Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction with his novel THE LAST MAN: A NOVEL OF THE 1927 SANTA CLAUS BANK ROBBERY. 

YOU’LL SEE by Suzanne Groves won a 2024 Maxy Award in the Bio & Memoir category.  

Teresa H. Janssen’s novel THE WAYS OF WATER was recognized as the best Western Novel by the Western Heritage Awards, bestowed by the National Cowboy Museum. 

TASTEFULLY TEXAS by K.S. Jones won first place in the 2023 Laramie Book Awards for American Fiction. 

P J Jones and Robert Davidson won the True Crime Nonfiction category of the American Legacy Awards. 

Jan Sikes earned a Literary Titan Book Award for A BEGGAR’S BARGAIN. 

In addition to being a Pulitzer finalist, CONTINENTAL RECKONING: THE AMERICAN WEST IN THE AGE OF EXPANSION by Elliott West also received the 2024 Bancroft Prize from Columbia University. 

FINALISTS 

THE FLEECING OF FORT GRIFFIN by Preston Lewis, was named a finalist in the western category by the American Legacy Book Awards. 

Chris Mullen earned a finalist spot in the American Legacy Book Awards for ROWDY: TO CATCH A KILLER and ROWDY: RESCUE. 

HERE’S THE STORY…NINE WOMEN WRITE THEIR LIVES was named a Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist. It includes a stories from Texas authors Linda Aronovsky Cox and Kathleen M. Rodgers. 

Reading the West Finalists (Voting is live now! Go pick your favorites.) 

Fiction— 

Paulette Jiles, CHENNEVILLE 

Bryan Washington, FAMILY MEAL 

Latoya Watkins, HOLLER CHILD 

Debut Fiction— 

Johnny Compton, THE SPITE HOUSE 

Tracey Rose Peyton, NIGHT WHEREVER WE GO 

Picture Books— 

Xelena González, REMEMBERING 

Anne Wynter, NELL PLANTS A TREE 

Young Readers— 

Polly Holyoke, SKYRIDERS 

Young Adult— 

Ashley Schumacher, THE RENAISSANCE OF GWEN HATHAWAY 

Dan Solomon, THE FIGHT FOR MIDNIGHT 

Jonny Garza Villa, ANDERS & SANTI WERE HERE