Award Recipients
We have awarded 796 awards, prizes, and fellowships in the past 129 years.
🏅 2019 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History
Brian A. Cervantez is Associate Professor of History at Tarrant County College, Northwest Campus, in Fort Worth, Texas.
🏅 2019 Al Lowman Memorial Prize
David W. Keller is senior project archaeologist at the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University. He is the author of Below the Escondido Rim: A History of the O2 Ranch in the Texas Big Bend and Alpine. He resides in Alpine, Texas.
🏅 2019 Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women
Cecilia Venable is the director of archives for the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate. She is the author of numerous books, scholarly articles, and a chapter in Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, On the Stage, Behind the Badge. She resides in Adkins, Texas.
🏅 2024 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History
Dr. Wesley G. Phelps is an associate professor of history and director of undergraduate studies at the University of North Texas in Denton, where he teaches courses on recent United States history and queer history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Rice University in 2010. His research focuses on how democracy operates at the grassroots level and how marginalized groups of people have struggled to participate in the democratic experiment. His book, A People’s War on Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2014. Phelps’ new book, titled Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement, was published by the University of Texas Press in February 2023. He is also the creator of “Queering the Lone Star State,” a 10-episode podcast series chronicling landmark legal cases in the struggle for queer equality in Texas.
🏅 2023 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History
🏅 2023 Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research
Sam W. Haynes is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington and director of UTA’s Center for Greater Southwestern Studies. His new book, Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, The Struggle for Texas,” a reassessment of the 1835-1836 revolt and its consequences for the people of Texas, will be published by Basic Books in May. He is also the author of Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (2010); James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse (1996), and Soldiers of Misfortune: The Somervell and Mier Expeditions (1990). He is the editor of numerous other works on Texas and the American Southwest, including Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution (with Gerald Saxon, 2015) and Major Problems in Texas History (with Cary Wintz, 2015). Haynes is a fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas State Historical Association. He received his PhD from the University of Houston.
Adina Emilia De Zavala, preservationist, eldest of six children of Augustine and Julia (Tyrrell) De Zavala and granddaughter of Lorenzo and Emily (West) de Zavala, was born on November 28, 1861, in Harris County. One of Miss Zavala's greatest contributions to Texas was the preservation of a portion of the old San Antonio de Valero Mission, better known as the Alamo, which her group prevented from being razed in the early twentieth century.
For more information about this author, please see the Handbook of Texas entry on Adina Emilia De Zavala.
Cary D. Wintz is a Professor of History at Texas Southern University and is a specialist in the Harlem Renaissance in black political thought. Wintz is the author of numerous books including Harlem Speaks, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, and African American Political Thought, 1890-1930. He served as an editor of the Oxford University Press five volume Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present, and the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. He has also written extensively on Texas history, and is an author of one of the standard Texas history texts, Texas: The Lone Star State.
Although Donaly E. Brice was born in Austin, Texas, he grew up and went to school in Lockhart. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in education with a major in social science from Southwest Texas State College, now Texas State University. He then went to Sam Houston State University and received a Master of Arts degree with a major in history.
He taught Texas history, American history, world geography, world history and civics for several years at Mathis High School in South Texas. In 1969 he enlisted in the U.S. Navy for four years. During part of this time he was stationed in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and volunteered at the Smithsonian Institution where he was introduced to historical and archival research. When he was discharged from the service, he decided that he would pursue a career in research, rather than go back into teaching. He began working at the Archives Division of the Texas State Liabrary in 1977 where he worked as a Processing Archivist, Research Assistant, and, finally, the Reference Archivist for the Library - a job he held until he retired in 2003. He immediately went back to work for the Archives in a part-time capacity as Senior Research Assistant. He has recently announced his upcoming - and final - retirement.
Donaly has always had a love of Texas history, especially Caldwell County history. He attributes this, in part, to the fact that, at an early age, he remembers going out to his great-uncle's farm and learning about the historic Battle of Plum Creek which occurred on the property.
Donaly is a charter member of the Caldwell County Genealogical and Historical Society, and served as president of the organization for eight years. He is also past chairman of the Caldwell County Historical Commission, of which he has been a member since its organization in 1974. He has served on the Caldwell County Sesquicentennial Committee and on the Dr. Eugene Clark Restoration Committee and the Caldwell County Courthouse Restoration Committee. He was principally responsible for the research that allowed the Caldwell County Courthouse Historic District to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
He has written or co-written four books on Texas histroy, including The Great Comanche Raid: Boldest Indian Attack of the Texas Republic. He has also written a number of historical articles that have been published in the The Plum Creek Almanac and The East Texas Historical Journal.
Donaly is a member of the East Texas Historical Association, the West Texas Historical Association, the Southern Historical Association and the Texas State HIstorical Association, who elected him as a Fellow of that organization in 2010.
Over the years Donaly has presented papers and given lectures to many historical and genealogical groups throughout the State of Texas.
