The Los Angeles Times announced the winners of its annual book prizes at a ceremony Friday night at the University of Southern California.
Bryan Washington took home the fiction award for his novel Palaver; the book was also a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction. The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction went to Justin Haynes for Ibis.
Karen Hao won in the science and technology category for Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which also won this year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. The history prize went to Bench Ansfield for Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City; the book was the winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction.
Ekow Eshun was the winner in the biography category for The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, while Brian Goldstone won the current interest award for There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America.
The mystery/thriller prize went to Megan Abbott for El Dorado Drive, and Silvia Park took home the science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction award for Luminous. Trung Le Nguyen won in the young adult literature category for Angelica and the Bear Prince, and Allison Benis White won the poetry prize for A Magnificent Loneliness. The achievement in audiobook production prize went to The Correspondent, written by Virginia Evans, produced by Kelly Gildea, and narrated by a large cast.
The previously announced winners of the awards include Adam Ross, who won the Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose for Playworld; Amy Tan, who was given the Robert Kirsch Award; and We Need Diverse Books, which was honored with the Innovator’s Award.
The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were first awarded in 1980. Previous winners include Jennifer Egan for A Visit From the Goon Squad, Steph Cha for Your House Will Pay, and Isabel Wilkerson for Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
