44th Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalists

The shortlists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been revealed. The Book Prizes recognize 66 works in 13 categories. The sff category finalists are:

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

  • Tananarive Due, The Reformatory: A Novel
  • Daniel Kraus, Whalefall
  • Victor LaValle, Lone Women: A Novel
  • V. E. Schwab, The Fragile Threads of Power
  • E. Lily Yu, Jewel Box: Stories

The category judges are Maurice Broaddus, Craig Laurance Gidney, and Lucy A. Snyder.

This category was previously named the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction category, sponsored by the Ray Bradbury Foundation. I asked judge Lucy A. Snyder if she knew the reason for the change and she explained: “My understanding is that the Bradbury estate recently changed ownership, and the new owners decided they didn’t want to sponsor the award any longer. (Sponsorship cost in the range of $22,000 a year to cover costs of the awards, flying the winners out, etc.)”

The complete list of finalists follows the jump.

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Nicola Griffith Wins Ray Bradbury Prize

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes winners were announced April 21. Spear, Nicola Griffith’s “queer Arthurian masterpiece for the modern era,” earned The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction.

The other finalists in the category were:

  • The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran
  • The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings
  • The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel by Ray Nayler
  • Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders

See the full list of LA Times Book Prize winners below.

BIOGRAPHY

  • Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

FICTION

  • Mircea Cărtărescu, Solenoid (translation by Sean Cotter)

GRAPHIC NOVELS/COMICS

  • Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith, Wash Day Diaries

HISTORY

  • Margaret A. Burnham, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners

MYSTERY/THRILLER

  • Alex Segura, Secret Identity

POETRY

  • Dionne Brand, Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

  • Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

THE ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION

  • Aamina Ahmad, The Return of Faraz Ali

THE RAY BRADBURY PRIZE FOR SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION

  • Nicola Griffith, Spear

YOUNG-ADULT LITERATURE

  • Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Torch

CURRENT INTEREST

  • Dahlia Lithwick, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

43rd Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalists

The shortlists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been revealed. The Book Prizes recognize 56 works in 12 categories. The complete list of finalists is here.

Sff works are honored in the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction category, sponsored by the Ray Bradbury Foundation. The category judges are Craig Laurance Gidney, Tim Pratt, and Lucy A. Snyder.

RAY BRADBURY PRIZE FINALISTS

  • The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran (Dreamland Books)
  • Spear by Nicola Griffith (Tordotcom)
  • The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings (Hachette Book Group/Redhook)
  • The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel by Ray Nayler (MCD)
  • Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders (Random House)

The winners will be announced at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 22-23 at the USC campus.

2022 LA Times Book Prizes

The 2022 LA Times Book Prizes were announced April 22.

The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction was awarded to Zen Cho’s story collection Spirits Abroad.

Judges commended the stories for their imagination, tenderness, joy and play. “During the past two years, for many of us, the world has felt harder than ever to exist in,” they said in a citation. “‘Spirits Abroad’ gave this judging panel a much-needed adventure.”

The complete list of winners is here.

2022 LA Times Book Prize Finalists

The finalists for the 2022 LA Times Book Prize were announced February 23.

The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

  • Mariana Enriquez, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, translated by Megan McDowell
  • Marissa Levien, The World Gives Way
  • Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland
  • Ryka Aoki, Light From Uncommon Stars
  • Zen Cho, Spirits Abroad

Works and authors of genre interest in other categories include Mystery/Thriller finalists S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Velvet Was the Night, and Young Adult Literature finalist Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth.

The complete list of finalists is here. The winners will be announced on April 22, the day before the LA Times Festival of Books begins.

Ray Bradbury Prize, Other LA Times Book Prize Winners Announced

The Los Angeles Times today named the winners of  the 41st annual Book Prizes today as a prologue to the Festival of Books, Stories and Ideas. Traditionally the nation’s largest in-person literary event, the festival will be held online this year, beginning on Saturday, April 17, and continuing over the course of six days.

The winners of genre interest follow. The complete list of winners is here.

The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

  • The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Graphic Novel/Comics

  • Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som

Angie Wang was the judge for the Graphic Novel / Comics category, and Tananarive Due was the judge for The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction.

Ray Bradbury Prize, Other LA Times Book Prize Finalists Announced

The Los Angeles Times today unveiled the finalists for the 41st annual Book Prizes. Winners will be announced virtually on Friday, April 16 in a prologue to the Festival of Books, Stories and Ideas. Traditionally the nation’s largest in-person literary event, the festival will be held online this year, beginning on Saturday, April 17, and continuing over the course of six days.

The finalists of genre interest follow below. The complete list of finalists is here.

The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

  • 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)

Graphic Novel/Comics

  • 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

[Via Locus Online.]

Los Angeles Times 2019 Book Prizes

Marlon James won the new Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction, and Walter Mosley was honored with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement when the 40th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were awarded today on The Times’ Books Twitter feed.

Following each prize announcement, a video of the winner’s speech was shared on Twitter, with all videos now compiled on The Times’ YouTube page.

The Book Prizes recognized outstanding literary works in 12 categories.

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
Marlon James

Bradbury Prize winner Marlon James said in his acceptance remarks:

Well, you know, there is something kind of ironic about winning an award in tribute to the creator of the original American dystopia when we are in a kind of dystopia. You know, I I think kind of it makes me think even more about Ray Bradbury and more about how we look at his dystopia as a possible future not realizing in a way it has happened. You know, we’re not burning books but we’re burning intelligence, we are burning expertise, we are burning the simple privilege of knowing, and we’re seeing the consequences of that. But let’s not deal too much with the bad because this is a great occasion and I’m so incredibly honored and so incredibly humbled by winning this the inaugural Ray Bradbury prize for science fiction fantasy and speculative fiction…

Walter Mosley’s acceptance video:

The complete list of 2019 Book Prizes finalists and previous winners is available at latimes.com/BookPrizes, as is eligibility and judging information

The Book Prizes awards ceremony usually takes place at the LA Times Festival of Books in the spring, but the event was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak, and rescheduled to October 3-4 at USC.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian and Michael Toman for the story.]