This is your semi-regular roundup of new and recent awards won by Texas books and authors.

2020 International Latino Book Awards

The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Award – English

SECOND PLACE, The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantú

Best Cookbook

FIRST PLACE, Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking (Texas Tech University Press), Adán Medrano

Best Nonfiction - Multi-Author

SECOND PLACE, MeXicana Fashions: Politics, Self Adornment, and Identity Construction (University of Texas Press), Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú

The Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Book Award

FIRST PLACE, Valiance, Vanessa Caraveo 

Best Collection of Short Stories – English or Bilingual

FIRST PLACE, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son (Cinco Puntos Press), Sergio Troncoso

Best Fiction Book Translation - Spanish to English

FIRST PLACE, Manhattan Tropics / Trópico en Manhattan (Arte Publico Press), Guillermo Cotto-Thorner, translated by J. Bret Maney

Best First Book - Fiction

FIRST PLACE, Lot, Bryan Washington

American Book Awards

Oral Literature Award: Amalia Leticia Ortiz

Publisher’s Weekly Star Watch 2020 Honorees

Melanie Conklin and Christina Soontornvat (Austin) for organizing the Everywhere Book Fest

Cristina Rodriguez, General Manager, Deep Vellum Books (Dallas)

Kesley Smith, Director of Business Development & Corporate Communications, Greenleaf Book Group (Austin)

NYPL Young Lions Award

Bryan Washington has won the twentieth annual Young Lions Fiction Award for his story collection Lot.

2020 Houston Literary Awards

The 2020 Literary Excellence awardees included science fiction novelist Justin Cronin, Houston’s first Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Zepeda, teen novelist Andrea White, children’s writer Varsha Bajaj, and inspirational author ReShonda Tate Billingsley. Nkem Denchukwu won the 2020 Reader’s Choice Award.

2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships

Poet Laureate of McAllen Rodney Gomez and Poet Laureate of Texas Emmy Pèrez are among the twenty-three poets laureate awarded fellowships this year.

2020 MacArthur Fellows

Cristina Rivera Garza, Fiction Writer, of Houston, for “exploring culturally constructed notions of language, memory, and gender from a transnational perspective.”

2020 Carol Award Winners

Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, The Gryphon Heist, James R. Hannibal