The Los Angeles Times has announced the finalists and honorees for its 46th annual Book Prizes. Amy Tan will be honored with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and We Need Diverse Books will receive the Innovator’s Award. Additionally, Adam Ross will receive the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.

The awards recognize outstanding literary achievements in 13 categories and celebrate the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers. The winners will be announced in a ceremony on Friday, April 17th at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, a prologue to the 31st annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, taking place April 18-19.

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2025 Finalists and Honorees

Achievement in Audiobook Production

• HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER: A Daughter's Memoir, narrated by Molly Jong-Fast (Penguin Audio)
• PEOPLE LIKE US narrated by Jason Mott, Ronald Peet and JD Jackson (Penguin Audio)
• THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS narrated by James Aaron Oh (Penguin Audio)
• BLACK IN BLUES: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, narrated by Imani Perry (Ecco)
• THE CORRESPONDENT narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler, Steve West and Jim Seybert (Random House Audio)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

• PLUM by Andy Anderegg (Hub City Press)
• IDLE GROUNDS by Krystelle Bamford (Scribner)
• DOMINION by Addie E. Citchens (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• IBIS by Justin Haynes (Harry N. Abrams)
• HUNCHBACK by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton (Hogarth)

Biography

• CHILDREN OF RADIUM: A Buried Inheritance, by Joe Dunthorne (Scribner)
• THE STRANGERS: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, by Ekow Eshun (Harper)
• THE MANY LIVES OF ANNE FRANK by Ruth Franklin (Yale University Press)
• PAPER GIRL: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, by Beth Macy (Penguin Press)
• PRIDE AND PLEASURE: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution, by Amanda Vaill (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

• PLAYWORLD by Adam Ross (Knopf)

Current Interest

• A GREEK TRAGEDY: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis, by Jeanne Carstensen (Atria/One Signal Publishers)
• UNABRIDGED: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary, by Stefan Fatsis (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US: Working and Homeless in America, by Brian Goldstone (Crown)
• NO MORE TEARS: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, by Gardiner Harris (Random House)
• WHEN IT ALL BURNS: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, by Jordan Thomas (Riverhead Books)

Fiction

• ONLY WAY OUT by Tod Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer)
• THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones (S&S/Saga Press)
• THESE HEATHENS by Mia McKenzie (Random House)
• GLORIA by Andrés Felipe Solano, translated by Will Vanderhyden (Counterpoint)
• PALAVER by Bryan Washington (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Graphic Novel/Comics

• BLACK COHOSH by Eagle Valiant Brosi (Drawn and Quarterly)
• LIFE DRAWING: A Love and Rockets Collection, by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics)
• MILK WHITE STEED by Michael D. Kennedy (Drawn and Quarterly)
• CANNON by Lee Lai (Drawn and Quarterly)
• THE EPHEMERATA: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief, by Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics)

History

• BLACK-OWNED: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore, by Char Adams (Tiny Reparations Books)
• BORN IN FLAMES: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, by Bench Ansfield (W. W. Norton & Company)
• TITANS OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters, by Jennifer Clapp (The MIT Press)
• BEFORE GENDER: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950, by Eli Erlick (Beacon Press)
• HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS UNITE!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America, by Aaron G. Fountain Jr. (The University of North Carolina Press)

Innovator’s Award

• We Need Diverse Books

Mystery/Thriller

• EL DORADO DRIVE by Megan Abbott (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
• EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD by Ace Atkins (William Morrow)
• CROOKS: A Novel About Crime and Family, by Lou Berney (William Morrow)
• THE PROVING GROUND: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company)
• KING OF ASHES by S. A. Cosby (Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar)

Poetry

• THE NEW ECONOMY by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Copper Canyon Press)
• BLUE OPENING: Poems, by Chet’la Sebree (Tin House)
• I DO KNOW SOME THINGS by Richard Siken (Copper Canyon Press)
• LAZARUS SPECIES: Poems, by Devon Walker-Figueroa (Milkweed Editions)
• A MAGNIFICENT LONELINESS by Allison Benis White (Four Way Books)

Robert Kirsch Award

• Amy Tan

Science & Technology

• THEY POISONED THE WORLD: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, by Mariah Blake (Crown)
• THE STORY OF CO2 IS THE STORY OF EVERYTHING: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World, by Peter Brannen (Ecco)
• EMPIRE OF AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, by Karen Hao (Penguin Press)
• STRATA: Stories from Deep Time, by Laura Poppick (W. W. Norton & Company)
• WHEN IT ALL BURNS: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, by Jordan Thomas (Riverhead Books)

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

• THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones (S&S/Saga Press
• THE DEATH OF MOUNTAINS by Jordan Kurella (Lethe Press)
• DEATH OF AN AUTHOR by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow)
• ESPERANCE by Adam Oyebanji (DAW)
• LUMINOUS by Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster)

Young Adult Literature

• THE CORRUPTION OF HOLLIS BROWN by K. Ancrum (HarperCollins)
• KING OF THE NEURO VERSE by Idris Goodwin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
• MY MOTHER, THE MERMAID CHASER by Jamie Jo Hoang (Crown Books for Young Readers)
• ANGELICA AND THE BEAR PRINCE by Trung Le Nguyen (Random House Graphic)
• TRUTH IS: A Novel in Verse, by Hannah V. Sawyerr (Harry N. Abrams)