Clara Sneed’s debut novel takes home Grand Prize!
Sneed, Darlene P. Campos honored by Texas Authors Museum
The novel Before We Turn to Dust, released by Blue Handle Publishing, has been named the Grand Prize winner of the Texas Author Museum & Institute of History’s 14th annual book contest.
Before We Turn to Dust — based on a real feud between two prominent Amarillo families — also won the 2026 Texas Authors Book Contest in the Literary Historical Fiction category. Sneed’s nonfiction book about the deadly saga, Because This Texas: An Account of the Sneed-Boyce Feud, won in the Crime & Criminals category.
The institute also named The Center of The Earth, written by Houston author Darlene P. Campos and published by Blue Handle, the best YA Historical novel of the year.
“Texas authors keep raising the bar,” said B. Alan Bourgeois, Director and Founder of the Texas Authors Museum & Institute of History. “This contest exists to spotlight real craft — books written with skill, heart, and purpose. The winners listed here earned their place through disciplined writing and stories that stay with you.”
Winners in the Texas Authors Book Contest will be recognized during the Lone Star Festival, held June 5 through June 7, at the Austin Southpark Hotel in Austin, Texas.
The Texas Authors Book Contest is judged by librarians, using a seven-part rubric focused on both technical execution and the intangible element readers recognize immediately: whether a book has genuine power on the page, according to Bourgeois.
For Sneed — a Texas native who now splits time between Milam County, Texas, and California, where she studied at Berkeley — part of that power came from her own family history. She is the great niece of Beal Sneed, who shot and killed his wife’s lover, Al Boyce Jr., on Polk Street in downtown Amarillo.
While researching the story for her books, Clara Sneed was granted access to love letters sent between Al Boyce and Lena Snyder Sneed, the third member of the tragic love triangle, by Boyce’s great-nephew.
Houston author Darlene P. Campos also used true events to give weight to her novel.
In The Center of the Earth, a Jewish boy flees Nazi Germany with her friend’s family and finds himself in Ecuador just as World War II is about to erupt. During her research phase, Campos interviewed several Holocaust survivors who made that trip to South America and lived in the community that Campos fictionalizes.
Those wishing to hear from Campos and Sneed have chances to do so in the coming weeks.
West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, will host Sneed on March 4, a free event for the Center for the Study of the American West entitled “Dust to Dust: Raising Ghosts and Writing Novels.”
Sneed will give the lecture at 7 p.m. in the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex Recital Hall. Copies of Before We Turn to Dust and Because This is Texas will be available for purchase.
“I think people will be fascinated to learn about the feud that rocked Amarillo but also the whole state of Texas,” said Dr. Alex Hunt, CSAW director, Regents Professor of English and Vincent-Haley Professor of Western Studies. “Sex, violence, and progressive ideas of justifiable homicide — it’s a fascinating story. More than that, Clara Sneed brings a great storyteller’s perspective to questions of how we tell history and write fiction.”
Campos will speak on Friday, February 27, at Mortar & Pestle in Huntsville, Texas. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. and will include a book signing.
She will then attend LITfest in Richmond, Texas, on March 7. The event is hosted by LIT Bookbar from noon to 6 p.m. Copies of The Center of The Earth will be available, along with previous titles Summer Camp is Cancelled and Heaven Isn’t Me.
