Winners in three special categories were also announced. James Ellroy will receive the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement; the American Library Assn.’s Freedom to Read Foundation will receive the Innovator’s Award; and Javier Zamora will be presented with the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.
The rest of the Book Prize winners will be announced in a ceremony on Friday, April 21, at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, the evening before the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, taking place the weekend of April 22-23.
Ellroy, who will accept the Robert Kirsch Award for bodies of work focused on the American West, is best known for his L.A.-based crime novels such as “L.A. Confidential” and “The Black Dahlia” — both part of his bestselling L.A. Quartet.
Ellroy also has written an investigative memoir, “My Dark Places,” as well as dozens of novels, many of them adapted into films, graphic novels and podcasts.
“We are pleased to recognize L.A. noir iconoclast James Ellroy with this year’s Kirsch Award,” said Times Books Editor Boris Kachka. “James’ writing life was shaped by the tragic, unsolved murder of his mother when he was 10, fostering an obsession with crime and the underworld that has animated his fiction and nonfiction across the decades.”
Of particular interest to readers of this blog: The Mystery/Thriller category. Congratulations to all.
Mystery/Thriller Finalists
Rachel Howzell Hall, We Lie Here: A Thriller
Laurie R. King, Back to the Garden
Tracey Lien, All That’s Left Unsaid
Alex Segura, Secret Identity
Peng Shepherd, “The Cartographers”
