2025 AWC, Woman of Achievement Award
2025 Laguna Blanca Community Leader Award
2025 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Service Award
2022 Finalist for the Alta California Prize
2021 Finalist in Gunpowder Press Latinx Chapbook Prize
2014 Finalist in the Rita Dove Poetry Award and the Faulkner Wisdom Competition
2013 Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award Finalist, Patterson Poetry Prize Finalist, First Place in Poetry at the 2013 International Latino Book Awards.
2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Mariposa Award for Best First Book, International Latino Book Awards
2012 Honorable Mention: Historical Fiction International Latino Book Awards, Glimmer Train Finalist, Honorable Mention in Family Matters Competition
2011 Finalist for the Premio Aztlan for Ocotillo Dreams, the National Hispanic Cultural
Center
2009 Winner of Kulupi’s Sense of Place Poetry Chapbook Contest
2009 Scholarship to the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley
2007 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship
2005 Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Honorable Mention in 1000-word Fiction
2003 Santa Barbara Writers Conference, First Prize in Poetry
Scholarship and Publications about Melinda Palacio
2015 Latina Authors and Their Muses (Twilight Times Books)
2013 Contemporary Chicana Literature (Re) Writing the Maternal Script Cambria Press by Dr. Cristina Herrera.
2013 “Playing with Fire” Daniel Olivas Interviews Melinda Palacio for the Los Angeles Review of Books
2012 Albuquerque Journal, Review of Melinda Palacio’s How Fire Is a Story, Waiting by Robert Woltman
2012 News Dispatch, article by Kelley Smith, Michigan City, Indiana
2012 LA Examiner Book Review by Frank Mundo
2011 El Paso Times. Book Review by Rigoberto González
2011 Albuquerque Journal. Book Review of Ocotillo Dreams by David Steinberg
2011 Southwestern American Literature, vol. 37 #1, article by Margo Wilson
2011 Publisher’s Weekly, Book Review of Ocotillo Dreams
2010 Navigating the Rough Waters of Publication, Quill Press, (one chapter of the book is dedicated to my work as a writer) by Marcia Meier