Times Book Prize finalists
Is your favorite author or title among the finalists for the L.A. Times Book Prizes?
The 35th annual L.A. Times Book Prizes finalists were announced Wednesday. In addition, two prize winners were revealed: The Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement will be presented to author T.C. Boyle, and LeVar Burton will be honored with the Innovators Award for inspiring generations of readers with Reading Rainbow.
Boyle, a novelist and short-story writer, is one of the West’s most prominent authors. His latest novel, out this month, is “The Harder They Come”; his books include “The Women,” “Drop City,” “The Tortilla Curtain,” “East Is East” and “The Road to Wellville.”
Born and raised in New York and a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Boyle is the recipient of numerous national and international literary prizes. He was a key figure in establishing the creative writing department at USC, where he has taught since 1978.
“T.C. Boyle has had a long-standing presence as both a writer and a teacher in the Southern California literary world,” L.A. Times book critic David L. Ulin said in a release announcing the award. “His stature within our community is unique, from the breadth of his novels and stories to his engagement with his students and role as a mentor.”
Burton will receive the Innovators Award for his work with Reading Rainbow. The actor hosted and created the TV show, which was broadcast on PBS for more than two decades.
After the show ended, he worked to secure the rights so he could create an app and school program to reach new generations of beginning readers. A wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to bring Reading Rainbow to disadvantaged students raised more than $5 million from more than 100,000 donors.
Meanwhile, five finalists in each of 10 categories of prizes were announced. The categories are biography, current interest, fiction, graphic novel, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, the Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction, and young adult literature.
The winners will be announced at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, which will be held April 18 at USC and are open to the public. Tickets go on sale March 17; details can be found online at www.latimes.com/book prizes.
The complete list of finalists is below. Biography Adam Begley, “Updike” Robert M. Dowling, “Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts”
Kirstin Downey, “Isabella: The Warrior Queen”
Stephen Kotkin, “Stalin: Volume 1 — Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928”
Andrew Roberts, “Napoleon: A Life” Current Interest Atul Gawande, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”
Jeff Hobbs, “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League”
Bryan Stevenson, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption”
Matt Taibbi, “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap”
Héctor Tobar, “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free” Fiction Donald Antrim, “The Emerald Light in the Air: Stories”
Jesse Ball, “Silence Once Beg un”
Siri Hustvedt, “The Blazing World”
Jenny Offill, “Dept. of Speculation”
Helen Oyeyemi, “Boy, Snow, Bird” Graphic Novel Roz Chast, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir”
Jaime Hernandez, “The Love Bunglers”
Mana Neyestani, “An Iranian Metamorphosis”
Olivier Schrauwen, “Arsène Schrauwen”
Mariko Tamaki (author) and Jillian Tamaki (illustrator), “This One Summer” Histor y Judith Flanders, “The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London” )
Mark Harris, “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War”
Walter Isaacson, “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution”
Adam Tooze, “The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931”
Lawrence Wright, “Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David” Mystery/Thriller Tom Bouman, “Dry Bones in the Valley”
Peter Heller, “The Painter” (Knopf)
Laura Lippman, “After I’m Gone”
Shawn Lawrence Otto, “Sins of Our Fathers”
Peter Swanson, “The Girl With a Clock for a Heart” Poetr y Gillian Conoley, “Peace” Katie Ford, “Blood Lyrics: Poems”
Peter Gizzi, “In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011”
Fred Moten, “The Feel Trio”
Claudia Rankine, “Citizen: An American Lyric” Science & Technology Michael Benson, “Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time”
Martin J. Blaser, MD, “Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues”
Naomi Klein, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate”
Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”
Christian Rudder, “Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)”
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Diane Cook, “Man v. Nature: Stories”
John Darnielle, “Wolf in White Van”
Valeria Luiselli, “Faces in the Crowd”
Eimear McBride, “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing”
David James Poissant, “The Heaven of Animals: Stories” Young Adult Literature Paul Fleischman, “Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines”
Candace Fleming, “The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia”
E.K. Johnston, “The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim”
Andrew Smith, “Grasshopper Jungle”
Jacqueline Woodson, “Brown Girl Dreaming”