Texas Writer Award

Each year, Texas Book Festival presents the Texas Writer Award — formerly known as the Bookend Award — to an esteemed writer in recognition of outstanding contributions to Texas literature. TBF’s Author Selection Committees consider adult fiction and nonfiction writers, children’s book authors, journalists, and screenwriters when nominating candidates for the award. Nominees are evaluated on originality, literary achievement, and the impact of their body of work. The award recipient is honored during a public session at the Texas Book Festival.

2024 Recipient

Palestinian-American writer, editor, and educator Naomi Shihab Nye grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas. A Graduate of Trinity University, she has been the Young People’s Poet Laureate for the U.S. (Poetry Foundation), poetry editor for the New York Times magazine, and The Texas Observer, and a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities all over the world, currently at Texas State University. Her books include Grace Notes, Everything Comes Next, The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air, Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, This Same Sky, and The Tree is Older than You Are: Poems & Paintings from Mexico. Her volume 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Turtle of Oman and The Turtle of Michigan have both been part of the Little Read program, North Carolina. She received Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Texas Institute of Letters, The National Book Critics Circle (Ivan Sandrof Award), and the Arab American Museum.