Thr 37th annual Los Angeles Time Book Prizes

The 37th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been awarded at the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium. The ceremony recognized outstanding literary achievement in 11 categories, including the new Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.

Novelist Thomas McGuane was honored with the 2016 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.

Ruebén Martinez received the Innovator’s Award for his work honoring Latino writers and expanding the community of readers throughout Southern California.


2016 WINNERS and FINALISTS

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Winner

• Nathan Hill, The Nix, Alfred A. Knopf

Runners Up

• Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story, Viking
• Idra Novey, Ways to Disappear, Little, Brown and Company
• Rebecca Schiff, The Bed Moved, Alfred A. Knopf

Biography

Winner

• Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, Alfred A. Knopf

Runners Up

• Claire Harman, Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart, Alfred A. Knopf
• Ross King, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, Bloomsbury USA
• James McBride, Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, Spiegel & Grau
• Frances Wilson, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

Winner

• Wesley Lowery, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, Little, Brown and Company

Runners Up

• Tash Aw, The Face: Strangers on a Pier, Restless Books
• Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, Random House
• Scholastique Mukasonga (Author), Jordan Stump (Translator), Cockroaches, Archipelago Books
• Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn: A Novel, Amistad/HarperCollins

Current Interest

Winner

• Svetlana Alexievich (Author), Bela Shayevich (Translator), Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Random House

Runners Up

• Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Crown
• Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Doubleday
• Ben Rawlence, City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, Picador
• Robert F. Worth, A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fiction

Winner

• Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone, Little, Brown and Company

Runners Up

• Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, W. W. Norton and Company
• Zadie Smith, Swing Time, Penguin Press
• Dana Spiotta, Innocents and Others, Scribner

Graphic Novel/Comics

Winner

• Nick Drnaso, Beverly, Drawn & Quarterly

Runners Up

• Anna Haifisch, The Artist, Breakdown Press LTD
• Patrick Kyle, Don’t Come in Here, Koyama Press
• Rokudenashiko, What Is Obscenity: The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy, Koyama Press
• Jason Shiga, Demon: Volume 1, First Second/Macmillan

History

Winner

• Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, Yale University Press

Runners Up

• Masha Gessen, Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, Schocken Books
• Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Viking
• Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Pantheon

Mystery / Thriller

Winner

• Bill Beverly, Dodgers, Crown

Runners Up

• Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, Skyhorse Publishing
• Emma Cline, The Girls, Random House
• Ian McGuire, The North Water, Henry Holt and Co
• Thomas Mullen, Darktown, 37 Ink/Atria Books

Poetry

Winner

• Rosmarie Waldrop, Gap Gardening: Selected Poems, New Directions

Runners Up

• Ishion Hutchinson, House of Lords and Commons: Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Phillis Levin, Mr. Memory & Other Poems, Penguin Books
• Jane Mead, World of Made and Unmade, Alice James Books
• Robyn Schiff, A Woman of Property, Penguin Books

Science & Technology

Winner

• Luke Dittrich, Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets, Random House

Runners Up

• Mary Roach, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, W. W. Norton and Company
• Sonia Shah, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Bruce Watson, Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age, Bloomsbury USA
• Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ecco

Young Adult Literature

Winner

• Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree, Harry N. Abrams

Runners Up

• Socorro Acioli (Author), Daniel Hahn (Translator), The Head of the Saint, Delacorte
• Julie Berry, The Passion of Dolssa, Viking Books for Young Readers
• John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, March: Book Three, Top Shelf Productions
• Meg Medina, Burn, Baby, Burn, Candlewick

Festival of Books news and updates are available on the event website, Facebook page and Twitter feed (#bookfest).