Romance Writers of America (RWA), the trade association for
romance fiction authors, has announced the 2019 RITA®
and Golden Heart® Awards. The RITA recognizes excellence
in published romance novels and novellas. The Golden Heart recognizes
excellence in unpublished romance manuscripts.
The winners were revealed at the 2019 RWA Annual Conference in New York City,
July 24-27.
The complete lists are linked above. Categories that include works of genre interest are listed below.
2019 RITA
Paranormal Romance
- Dearest Ivie by J. R. Ward (Ballantine Bantam Dell, Ballantine Books, Kara Walsh, editor)
2019 Golden Heart
Paranormal Romance
- Bless Your Heart and Other Southern Curses by Heather Leonard
This year’s Rita Awards are pretty remarkable, for not only do we have three winners of colour (after a flap last year when only one writer of colour was nominated) this year, but we also have the first black writer winning in the contemporary long category (which is the Ritas’ big one) and the first writer of Indian origin ever winning in the YA category.