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

Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships

The Academy of American Poets has announced its 2020 Poets Laureate Fellows. The fellowships are intended to help the poets lead civic poetry programs in their communities over the next year. Each of the 23 fellows serve as poets laureate of states, cities, and counties, with one serving as poet laureate of the Navajo Nation.

Your Texas American Poets Laureate Fellows for 2020 are the State of Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Pérez and McAllen Poet Laureate Rodney Gomez. The fellows will receive $50,000 each for a combined total of $1.1 million. In addition, the Academy will provide $66,500 to twelve community-focused nonprofit organizations across the country to support the fellows’ proposed projects.

Triangle Awards

The Publishing Triangle, the association of LGBTQ people in publishing, has announced the winners of the 32nd annual Triangle Awards, honoring the best LGBTQ fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and trans literature published in 2019. The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction was awarded to How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones, who grew up in Lewisville, Texas.

Luminaria grants

Six San Antonio-area artists, from a pool of seventy-nine proposals, have been selected to receive $10,000 grants from the Luminaria Artist Foundation for the creation of new work. Poet Octavio Quintanilla received the literary arts grant.

“All of the work is going to be new work that influences San Antonio,” said Kathy Armstrong, executive director of Luminaria. “It will be work that will be performed here, work that is exhibited here, and that will go on to be performed and exhibited other places and will carry the legacy of San Antonio with it.”

Writer's Digest Popular Fiction Awards

Mary Lou Condike, of Granbury, won first place in the Crime category of the fifteenth annual Writer's Digest Popular Fiction Awards. Follow the link to read her winning story, "A Cowgirl Farewell."

International Dylan Thomas Prize

Bryan Washington won the £30,000 (about $38,160) International Dylan Thomas Prize for his debut short story collection, Lot. Sponsored by Swansea University, the award recognizes the "best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under."

Chair of the judges Dai Smith said Washington’s collection "does what all great fiction does, finds a style that can open up a world that is otherwise unknowable and he does it with wit and grace. It is a real voice, unique, unforgettable, generous, and warm and one which provides us with a sense of community and the full experience of life. As one of the judges said he has a country and western kickass voice."

50 Books | 50 Covers

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the professional association for design, has announced the results of its 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2019 competition, which recognizes design that "successfully demonstrate design excellence in the book and cover categories." Book designers and publishers entered nearly eight hundred book and cover designs from thirty-two countries, the AIGA said. 

Your Texas winners are Ellsworth Kelly: Austin (Radius Books and the Blanton Museum of Art) by Carter E. Foster and Simone J. Wicha in the Book and Cover category, and Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press) by Hanif Abdurraqib in the Cover category.
 

All of the winners can be viewed in the AIGA winner gallery.

Rare Book School-Mellon CH Fellowships

Rare Book School has selected fifteen fellows, from more than sixty applicants, to join the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage (RBS-Mellon CH Fellowship). Fellows will participate in a three-year program that includes an orientation, Rare Book School coursework, community symposia, and other activities relating to multicultural collections and trainings.

Your Texas RBS-Mellon CH fellows are Dale J. Correa, Middle Eastern Studies librarian and history coordinator, the University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin; and Rachel E. Winston, Black Diaspora archivist, also at UT Austin.

  
The selected fellows work closely with a broad spectrum of multicultural collections, ranging from Cuban heritage collections and Black diaspora archives, to Los Angeles community-centered archives to HBCU library collections, and from post-custodial human rights archives representing Latin America and Africa, to digital collections of cultural heritage items from tribal archives, libraries, and museums.

Amazon Literary Partnership Grants

The Amazon Literary Partnership has announced $1 million in grant funding to sixty-six organizations across the country. It has also donated emergency relief funding to Artist Relief and PEN America Writer’s Emergency Fund, both of which are providing grants directly to writers impacted by Covid-19. In addition, Amazon awarded $120,000 in grants to the Academy of American Poets and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses to establish a poetry fund and literary magazine fund, respectively.

This year’s grant recipients include organizations from twenty-four states and Washington, D.C, including Deep Vellum Publishing of Dallas and Writers in the Schools of Houston.