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