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| Jodi Thomas, NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author |
A fifth generation Texan who taught family living, Jodi Thomas chooses to set the majority of her novels in her home state, where her grandmother was born in a covered wagon. A former teacher, Thomas traces the beginning of her storytelling career to the days when her twin sisters were young and impressionable.
The stories Thomas has committed to paper have earned her an impressive list of distinguished awards:
- Her first book, Beneath the Texas Sky (1988), won the National Press Women's Novel of the Year in its category.
- Book two, Northern Star (1990), was named best novel by the (Texas) Panhandle Professional Writers and the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc., an organization of writers’ groups from several states.
- Book three, The Tender Texan (1991), was Thomas’s first national bestseller and won her the first Romance Writers of America’s RITA, the $1.5 billion romance publishing industry’s equivalent of an "Oscar."
- Book twelve, To Kiss a Texan (1999), was her first novel to score on the USA TODAY Best-selling Books list.
- For The Texan’s Wager (2002), sixteen was the magic number. As Thomas’s sixteenth novel, the book scored number sixteen on the NEW YORK TIMES extended bestseller list.
- Her second contemporary, Finding Mary Blaine (2004), won the National Readers’ Choice Award.
- In July 2006, Jodi was the 11th woman to be inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame for winning her third RITA in the category of short historical romance for The Texan’s Reward (2005).
- In 2009, Jodi received the National Readers’ Choice Award for two of her books: Twisted Creek (2008) and Tall, Dark and Texan (2008).
- In 2010, The Lone Texan won the Reader’s Choice 2009 Best Western Romance from Love Western Romances.com.
With a degree in Family Studies, Thomas is a marriage and family counselor by education, a background that enables her to write about family dynamics. Honored in 2002 as a Distinguished Alumni by Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Thomas enjoys interacting with students on the West Texas A & M University campus, where she currently serves as Writer In Residence.
Commenting on her contribution to the arts, Thomas said, "When I was teaching classes full time, I thought I was making the world a better place. Now I think of a teacher, or nurse, or mother settling back and relaxing with one of my books. I want to take her away on an adventure that will entertain her. Maybe, in a small way, I’m still making the world a better place."
Commenting on her contribution to the arts, Thomas said, "When I was teaching classes full time, I thought I was making the world a better place. Now I think of a teacher, or nurse, or mother settling back and relaxing with one of my books. I want to take her away on an adventure that will entertain her. Maybe, in a small way, I’m still making the world a better place."
