LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZES

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Winners were just announced. The literary awards continue to champion new voices and celebrate the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers.

2019 Book Prizes Winners

• Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Namwali Serpell, “The Old Drift: A Novel,” Hogarth
• Biography: George Packer, “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century,” Knopf
• Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose: Emily Bernard, “Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine,” Knopf
• Current Interest: Emily Bazelon, “Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration,” Random House
• Fiction: Ben Lerner, “The Topeka School: A Novel,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux
• Graphic Novel/Comics: Eleanor Davis, “The Hard Tomorrow,” Drawn & Quarterly
• History: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, “They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South,” Yale University Press
• Mystery/Thriller: Steph Cha, “Your House Will Pay: A Novel,” Ecco
• Poetry: Ilya Kaminsky, “Deaf Republic: Poems,” Graywolf Press
• Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction: Marlon James, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” (The Dark Star Trilogy Book 1), Riverhead
• Science & Technology: Maria Popova, “Figuring,” Knopf
• Young Adult Literature: Malla Nunn, “When the Ground is Hard,” G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

The Book Prizes recognized outstanding literary works in 12 categories, including the new Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction. Walter Mosley was honored with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and WriteGirl received the Innovator’s Award for its contributions to the community, promoting literacy and creativity to empower girls.

The Book Prizes awards ceremony is traditionally part of the Festival of Books weekend, but the springtime events were cancelled in light of public health concerns related to the coronavirus. The Festival of Books was rescheduled to Oct. 3-4 at USC. Festival of Books news and updates are available on the event website, Facebook page and Twitter feed (#bookfest).

L..A. Times Book Awards

"In a scaled-down awards ceremony on the fifth floor of the L.A. Times building, the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were awarded last night with as much enthusiasm and humor as any of the more grandly produced affairs of recent years.

Leading for humor was Terry Pratchett, who accepted his prize for young adult novel by video. The tape showed Pratchett leaning back in a chair, books to one side and a stiff, somewhat cranky cat on the other." Read the rest of this article and all the winners and nominees here.

Michael Koryta was the winner of the mystery/thriller prize for Envy the Night. He said he'd been nervous about the possibility of having to speak before the crowd, but as he arrived he "had the opportunity to meet a lifetime hero, James Ellroy -- and now you all don't seem so scary."

Read the Michael Koryta interview at Mystery Readers International At Home Online.

Mystery/Thriller nominees:
Colin Harrison, The Finder
Simon Lewis, Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian Novel
Nina Revoyr, The Age of Dreaming
Tom Rob Smith, Child 44