Congratulation to the 2019 RITA Award Winners!

The 2019 RITA Award recipients will make July 26, 2019, a day to remember in Romance writing acknowledgment history. This year Authors of Color, Authors of Diversity were acknowledged with top honors – and it’s a long, long overdue celebration.

As a reader and a blogger, this is one ceremony that I wish I could attend in person, but I’m content to watch the live streams and read the Twitter updates as the conference moves through the days leading up to award night.

Many of the authors who took home awards are long-time favorite authors or authors that I’ve read a few of their books. So many more are new-to-me, and I’ll be frank and tell you that I headed over to Amazon to pick up titles by the winners. When a book receives a RITA, then I should be reading it. It’s just that simple. And I will be going over the finalists and the mentions as well to pick up even more titles.

So, my congratulations to every single winner whether it’s the first statue received or the latest – all are amazing talents yet it’s their hard work, perseverance, stubbornness, blood, sweat, tears, and love of the written word – and belief in themselves – that brought every single person on that stage to where they stand today as an RWA RITA Award winner.

I don’t know any of these talented people personally — but I am so happy for every author there.

Here are the RITA Award winners for 2019. Each book title is linked back to GoodReads should you like to check them out a bit more.

RITA AWARD WINNERS 2019

PARANORMAL ROMANCE

Dearest Ivie by J. R. Ward

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: LONG

Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan

YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE

My So-Called Bollywood Life by Nisha Sharma

HISTORICAL ROMANCE: SHORT

A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: MID-LENGTH