
41st Annual L.A. Times Book Prize Virtual Ceremony Friday, April 16th, 5pm PT!
Celebrate today's most notable authors at L.A.’s preeminent literary awards show honoring the best books of 2020! The awards ceremony will be held virtually on Friday, April 16m 5pm PT. Stay tuned to this space for more details on the ceremony.
You may buy the finalists' books by clicking the links in the category headings below. The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop whose fees support independent bookstores.
Robert Kirsch Award
Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in 1948 to a family whose ancestry includes Mexican, Laguna Indian, and European forebears. She has said that her writing has at its core “the attempt to identify what it is to be a half-breed or mixed-blood person.” As she grew up on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, she learned the stories and culture of the Laguna people from her great-grandmother and other female relatives. After receiving her B. A. in English at the University of New Mexico, she enrolled in the University of New Mexico law school but completed only three semesters before deciding that writing and storytelling, not law, were the means by which she could best promote justice. Prior to the publication of Ceremony in 1977, she published short stories and authored Laguna Woman: Poems, for which she received the Pushcart Prize. She followed the critical success of Ceremony with a series of other novels, including Storyteller, Almanac for the Dead, and Gardens in the Dunes. It was the singular achievement of Ceremony that first secured her a place among the first rank of Native American novelists.
Innovator’s Award
The Book Industry Charitable Organization (Binc)
The Book Industry Charitable Organization (BINC) is a nonprofit that coordinates charitable programs to strengthen the bookselling community. Binc's core program provides assistance to employees and shop owners who have a demonstrated financial need arising from severe hardship and/or emergency circumstances. Since its inception, the organization has provided over $9 million in financial assistance and scholarships to more than 9000+ families. Support for Binc’s programs and services comes from all sectors of the book and comic industries. Their mission is to strengthen the bookselling and comic retail community through charitable programs that support employees and their families. The Foundation was imagined and built by booksellers and continues to be their safety net.
The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose
Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan
In a classically shaped story based on events in his own life, Andrew O'Hagan masterfully captures a particular time and place: Glasgow during the 1980s, with its post-punk music and the Thatcher era. This is the story of two young men and one seminal night during their lives, culminating in a dramatic ending that leaves readers stunned with admiration and equally awed by the fierce, determined courage of the leading character named Tully. There is also a universality among the themes: youth, and the time when everything is an agony but when it feels that anything might yet happen. The throb of the possible, and the shimmery future, and always, alongside, the bigger question of freewill. In keeping with the legacy of Christopher Isherwood, Andrew O'Hagan's prose is accessible and engaging, distinctive and original. Funny, well-paced and elegant, Mayflies is a striking achievement in the career of its author, and the judges universally agreed that this novel was a superior and satisfying work of fiction in every single way.
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
FINALISTS
These Ghosts Are Family: A Novel by Maisy Card
Little Gods by Meng Jin
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
A House is a Body: Stories by Shruti Swamy
Biography
FINALISTS
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
Warhol by Blake Gopnik
Eleanor by David Michaelis
The Dead are Arising by Les Payne & Tamara Payne
Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck by William Souder
Current Interest
FINALISTS
A Knock at Midnight: A story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom by Brittany K. Barnett
Waiting for an Echo by Christine Montross, M.D.
Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Fiction
FINALISTS
What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron
At Night All Blood Is Black: A Novel by David Diop, Anna Moschovakis (Translator)
The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories by Danielle Evans
Likes by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Graphic Novel/Comics
FINALISTS
Umma's Table by Yeon-sik Hong, Janet Hong (translator)
Blue Flag (vol. 1-4) by KAITO
Sports is Hell by Ben Passmore
Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som
Come Home, Indio: A Memoir by Jim Terry
History
FINALISTS
South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War by Alice Baumgartner
The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants by Adam Goodman
The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones
The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State by David Vine
Mystery/Thriller
FINALISTS
A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
And Now She’s Gone by Rachel Howzell Hall
Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier
These Women by Ivy Pochoda
Poetry
FINALISTS
Obit by Victoria Chang
Borderland Apocrypha by Anthony Cody
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts by Nikky Finney
Science & Technology
FINALISTS
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values by Brian Christian
Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez
The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson
The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction
FINALISTS
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Lakewood: A Novel by Megan Giddings
The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Trilogy, 1) by N. K. Jemisin
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, Polly Barton (translator)
Young Adult Literature
FINALISTS
The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Go with the Flow by Karen Schneemann & Lily Williams
The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party by Allan Wolf
Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi & Dr. Yusef Salaam