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LAT Book Prize Finalists Announced
Photo by ~db~ via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr
The finalists were announced today for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The awards will be given out in a ceremony at USC on April 20.
There are five finalists in each category -- current interest, fiction, first fiction, biography, history, mystery-thriller, science and technology, graphic novel, poetry and young adult literature. Among those in the running are Stephen King, poet Linda Norton, memoirist Alexandra Styron and novelist Joseph O'Connor.
At the April 20 event, Rudolfo Anaya ("Bless Me, Ultima") will be presented with the Robert Kirsch Award for significant contribution to American letters.
Here's a full list of the 50 finalists:
Biography
“Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned” by John A. Farrell (Doubleday)
“Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” by Manning Marable (Viking)
“Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman” by Robert K. Massie (Random House)
“Reading My Father: A Memoir” by Alexandra Styron (Scribner)
“My Long Trip Home” by Mark Whitaker (Simon & Schuster)
Current Interest
“Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything” by David Bellos (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
“El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency” by Ioan Grillo (Bloomsbury Press)
“Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
“Pakistan: A Hard Country” by Anatol Lieven (PublicAffairs)
“The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear” by Seth Mnookin (Simon & Schuster)
Fiction
“Ghost Light” by Joseph O'Connor (Frances Coady Book/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
“The Cat's Table” by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)
“The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka (Knopf)
“Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories” by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books/University of North Carolina Wilmington)
“Luminarium” by Alex Shakar (SoHo Press)
Sponsored message
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
“The Art of Fielding” by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown)
“Ten Thousand Saints” by Eleanor Henderson (Ecco/HarperCollins)
“Leaving the Atocha Station” by Ben Lerner (Coffee House Press)
“Shards” by Ismet Prcic (Grove Press, Black Cat)
“The Arriviste” by James Wallenstein (Milkweed Editions)
Graphic Novel
“I Will Bite You! And Other Stories” by Joseph Lambert (Secret Acres)
“Celluloid” by Dave McKean (Fantagraphics)
“Finder: Voice” by Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse)
“Congress of the Animals” by Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics)
“Garden” by Yuichi Yokoyama (PictureBox)
History
“The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination” by Javier Cercas (Bloomsbury Press)
“1861: The Civil War Awakening” by Adam Goodheart (Knopf)
“To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918” by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
“Molotov's Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History” by Rachel Polonsky (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
“Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America” by Richard White (W.W. Norton)
Mystery-Thriller
“Started Early, Took My Dog” by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)
“Plugged” by Eoin Colfer (Overlook Press)
“11/22/63” by Stephen King (Scribner)
“Snowdrops: A Novel” by A.D. Miller (Doubleday)
“The End of Wasp Season” by Denise Mina (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)
Poetry
“Songs of Unreason” by Jim Harrison (Copper Canyon Press)
“Discipline” by Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat Books)
“The Public Gardens” by Linda Norton (Pressed Wafer)
“Double Shadow: Poems” by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
“Devotions” by Bruce Smith (University of Chicago Press)
Science & Technology
“A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher” by Joel Achenbach (Simon & Schuster)
“The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood” by James Gleick (Pantheon)
“Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men” by Mara Hvistendahl (PublicAffairs)
“Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius” by Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster)
“Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution” by Holly Tucker (W.W. Norton)
Young Adult Literature
“Beauty Queens” by Libba Bray (Scholastic Press)
“The Big Crunch” by Pete Hautman (Scholastic Press)
“A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd” by Patrick Ness (Candlewick Press)
“Life: An Exploded Diagram” by Mal Peet (Candlewick Press)
“The Scorpio Races” by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic Press)
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