Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalists Announced

LOS ANGELES, March 10, 2003 -- The Los Angeles Times announced the finalists for the 23rd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, which will be presented April 26 at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles.
The 45 Book Prize finalists were announced during a March 7 evening reception at the National Arts Club in New York. The event was hosted by Los Angeles Times Features Editor Rick Flaste; Kenneth Turan, director of the Book Prizes and Times film critic; and Times Book Editor Steve Wasserman.

The 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes will honor outstanding literary achievement in nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction.

In addition to these nine categories awards, the annual Robert Kirsch Award also will be presented April 26. The award will recognize the body of work of an author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the Western United States. It is named after Robert Kirsch, who served as The Times’ book critic for more than 25 years prior to his death in 1980. There are no finalists for this category.

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were established in 1980. Each Book Prize includes a $1,000 cash award.

Presenting the nine category awards at the ceremony will be Gayle E. Anderson, A. Scott Berg, T. Jefferson Parker, George Plimpton, John Rechy, Dava Sobel, Ronald Steel, Susan Straight and Quincy Troupe. The Robert Kirsch Award will be presented by author Jonathan Kirsch, son of the late book critic.

Information about the awards ceremony and the Book Prize awards program is available at https://www.latimes.com/bookprizes or by calling 1-800-LATIMES, ext. 72366.

The Book Prize awards ceremony will be the highlight of the eighth annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, one of the nation’s premier public literary festivals and the largest of its kind on the West Coast. The festival will be held April 26-27 on the UCLA campus.

Book Prize Finalists

Biography

• Gioconda Belli, “The Country under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War” (Alfred A. Knopf)

• Robert A. Caro, “Master of the Senate: The Years

of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3” (Alfred A. Knopf)

• Daniel Ellsberg, “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam

and the Pentagon Papers” (Viking)

• T.J. Stiles, “ Jesse James: Last Rebel of the

Civil War” (Alfred A. Knopf)

• Claire Tomalin, “ Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled

Self” (Alfred A. Knopf)

Current Interest

• Timothy Ferris, “Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard

Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space, and Guarding Earth from

Interplanetary Peril” (Simon & Schuster)

• Judith Levine, “Harmful to Minors: The Perils

of Protecting Children from Sex” ( University of Minnesota

Press)

• Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner (editors), “The

New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention”

(Basic Books)

• Kevin Phillips, “Wealth and Democracy: A Political

History of the American Rich” (Broadway Books)

• Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell: America

and the Age of Genocide” (Basic Books)

Fiction

• Peter Cameron, “The City of Your Final Destination”

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• Aleksandar Hemon, “Nowhere Man” (Nan A.

Talese/Doubleday)

• Kate Jennings, “Moral Hazard” (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins)

• Ian McEwan, “Atonement” (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

• Joanna Scott, “Tourmaline” (Little, Brown

and Company)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

• Jay Basu, “The Stars Can Wait” ( Henry Holt

and Company)

• Jonathan Safran Foer, “Everything Is Illuminated”

(Houghton Mifflin Company)

• Nicole Krauss, “Man Walks into a Room” (Nan

A. Talese/Doubleday)

• Hari Kunzru, “The Impressionist” (Dutton/Penguin

Group (USA))

• Arthur Phillips, “Prague” (Random House)

History

• Philip Dray, “At the Hands of Persons Unknown:

The Lynching of Black America” (Random House)

• Robert Harms, “The Diligent: A Voyage through

the Worlds of the Slave Trade” (Basic Books)

• Gregg Herken, “Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled

Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence,

and Edward Teller” (Henry Holt and Company)

• Mary Beth Norton, “In the Devil’s Snare:

The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692” (Alfred A. Knopf)

• Michael B. Oren, “Six Days of War: June 1967

and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (Oxford University

Press)

Mystery/Thriller

• Stephen L. Carter, “The Emperor of Ocean Park”

(Alfred A. Knopf)

• Tod Goldberg, “Living Dead Girl” (Soho Press)

• Henning Mankell, “One Step Behind” [translated

from the original Swedish by Ebba Segerberg] (The New Press)

• George P. Pelecanos, “Hell to Pay” (Little,

Brown and Company)

• Scott Turow, “Reversible Errors” (Farrar,

Straus and Giroux)

Poetry

• Terrance Hayes, “Hip Logic” (Penguin Books)

• John Koethe, “North Point North: New and Selected

Poems” (HarperCollins Publishers)

• J.D. McClatchy, “Hazmat” (Alfred A. Knopf)

• Harryette Mullen, “Sleeping with the Dictionary”

(University of California Press)

• Cynthia Zarin, “The Watercourse: Poems”

(Alfred A. Knopf)

Science and Technology

• Deborah Blum, “Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow

and the Science of Affection” (Perseus Publishing)

• Judith Hooper, “Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary

Tale, the Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth”

(W.W. Norton)

• Mark Kurlansky, “Salt: A World History”

(Walker and Company)

• Brenda Maddox, “Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady

of DNA” (HarperCollins Publishers)

• Richard Preston, “The Demon in the Freezer: A

True Story” (Random House)

Young Adult Fiction

• M.T. Anderson, “Feed” (Candlewick Press)

• Kate Banks, “Dillon Dillon” (Frances Foster

Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• Sarah Dessen, “This Lullaby” (Viking/Penguin

Young Readers Group)

• E.R. Frank, “America” (Richard Jackson Books/Atheneum

Books for Young Readers)

• Joyce Carol Oates, “Big Mouth & Ugly Girl”

(HarperTempest/HarperCollins)

Robert Kirsch Award

• There are no finalists for this category. The winner

will be announced April 26.

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction commemorates the

work of the late Times book editor and Book Prize program

founder.

Finalist Selection Process

Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists were selected by eight three-member committees. Fiction category judges also chose the first fiction category finalists. Most of the judges are published authors and serve a two-year term. None of the judges, except for the Kirsch award, are current Los Angeles Times employees.

There is no nationality requirement for author nominees in any category. With the exception of significant new translations of a deceased author’s work, all authors should be living at the time of U.S. publication.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was created in 1996 to promote literacy, celebrate the written word, and bring together those who create books with the people who love to read them. Last year, more than 140,000 people attended the event, which featured 400 best-selling authors, 95 panel sessions and 300 specialty booksellers and book publishers.

General event information is available online at https://www.latimes.com/festivalofbooks or by calling 1-800-LA TIMES, ext. 7BOOK. Detailed speaker and event information will be provided in the official festival program which will be published in the April 20 edition of the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing company, is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the country and the winner of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. The Times publishes four daily regional editions covering the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Orange and Ventura counties and the San Fernando Valley, as well as a National Edition.