The winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced at a ceremony on Friday at the University of Southern California.
The fiction award went to the novel Solenoid, written by Romanian author Mircea Cartarescu and translated by Sean Cotter. The novel is the second translated book in three years to win the fiction prize; the 2021 winner was At Night All Blood Is Black, written by David Diop and translated by Anna Moschovakis.
Beverly Gage took home the biography prize for G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. The book previously won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Bancroft Prize.
The mystery/thriller award went to Alex Segura’s Secret Identity, while Nicola Griffith’s Spear won the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction. Margaret A. Burnham won the history prize for By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, and Dahlia Lithwick took home the current interest award for Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle To Save America.
Winning the young adult prize was Lyn Miller-Lachmann for Torch. The science and technology award went to Sabrina Imbler for How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures. Aamina Ahmad won the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction for The Return of Faraz Ali.
Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith’s Wash Day Diaries won in the graphic novel category, while Dionne Brand’s Nomenclature took home the poetry prize.
The winners of three previously announced prizes were also honored at the ceremony: James Ellroy, who won the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement; the Freedom to Read Foundation, which won the Innovator’s Award; and Javier Zamora, who won the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for Solito.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
