The 2019 Writers' League of Texas Book Awards
Winners, Finalists, and Discovery Prize Winners

(For books published in 2019)

   

Fiction 

Winner: 

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Finalists: 

Where We Come From by Oscar Cásares

A Particular Kind of Black Man by Tope Folarin

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington

Discovery Prize Winner: 

Watershed by Mark Barr

Nonfiction 

Winner: 

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

Finalists: 

Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas by Stephen Harrigan

How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones

Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser

The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown by Karen Olsson

Discovery Prize Winner: 

This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession by Cameron Dezen Hammon 

Poetry 

Winner: 

The Tiny Journalist: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye

Finalists: 

The Last Visit by Chad Abushanab

I Will Destroy You: Poems by Nick Flynn

Another Last Day by Alex Lemon

Newsworthy: Poems by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton

Discovery Prize Winner: 

Ceremony of Sand: Poems by Rodney Gomez

Middle Grade/Young Adult 

Winner: 

Redwood and Ponytail by K.A. Holt

Finalists: 

The Other Half of Happy by Rebecca Balcárcel

Her Own Two Feet: A Rwandan Girl's Brave Fight to Walk by Meredith Davis and Rebeka Uwitonze

Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly

Discovery Prize Winners: 

Eloia Born by Britta Jensen

Manufactured Witches by Michelle Rene

Picture Book 

Winner: 

Ella McKeen, Kickball Queen by Beth Mills

Finalists: 

Chicken Break! A Counting Book by Cate Berry

King of the Tightrope: When the Great Blondin Ruled Niagara by Donna Janell Bowman

Instructions Not Included: How a Team of Women Coded the Future by Tami Lewis Brown and Debbie Loren Dunn

A Voice for the Spirit Bears: How One Boy Inspired Millions to Save a Rare Animal by Carmen Oliver