L.A. Times Announces 1997 Book Prize Winners

The Los Angeles Times announced the winners of its 1997 Book Prize awards today. The winners of the first seven categories are:

* Fiction: “In the Rogue Blood,” by James Carlos Blake (Avon).

* Poetry: “Black Zodiac,” by Charles Wright (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

* History: “A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution,” by Orlando Figes (Viking Penguin).

* Biography: “Whittaker Chambers: A Biography,” by Sam Tanenhaus (Random House).

* Science and Technology: “How the Mind Works,” by Steven Pinker (W.W. Norton).

* Current Interest: “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures,” by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

* The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: “Don’t Erase Me,” by Carolyn Ferrell (Houghton Mifflin).

The winning authors will be honored at an awards ceremony at the Los Angeles Times on April 24, where an eighth award, the Robert Kirsch Award, will be announced. The ceremony will be hosted by Michael Parks, editor and executive vice president of The Times, and Kenneth Turan, Times film critic and director of the Book Prize program.

The Book Prizes, which were first awarded in 1980, are presented annually. Each prize includes a citation and a $1,000 cash award.