Los Angeles Times Announces Kirsch Award Winner, Book Prize Finalists
March 10 2005 - 11:00AM
PR Newswire (US)
Los Angeles Times Announces Kirsch Award Winner, Book Prize
Finalists 25th Annual Literary Awards to Be Presented April 22,
2005 LOS ANGELES, March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Best-selling mystery
writer Tony Hillerman, whose writings over the past 35 years are
infused with the landscape and culture of the American Southwest,
has been named the winner of the 25th annual Los Angeles Times Book
Prizes' Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. The award was
announced March 9 along with the 45 finalists for the 2004 Los
Angeles Times Book Prizes during an evening reception at the
National Arts Club in New York. Serving as event hosts were Times
Editor John Carroll; Kenneth Turan, Director of the Book Prizes and
Times film critic; and Times Book Editor Steve Wasserman. The Book
Prizes will be presented April 22 at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los
Angeles. In addition to the Kirsch Award, the evening will honor
2004's outstanding books in nine categories: biography, current
interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award),
history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and
young adult fiction. The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were
established in 1980. Each Book Prize includes a $1,000 cash award.
The named awards commemorate the life and work of Robert Kirsch,
who served as The Times' book critic for more than 25 years prior
to his death in 1980, and of the late Art Seidenbaum, who founded
the Book Prizes. The Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of an
author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the Western
United States. Tony Hillerman lives in New Mexico and has used the
peoples, culture and landscape of the American Southwest
extensively in his many books, including the 16-book collection
known as The Navajo Mysteries. His first novel, The Blessing Way,
was published in 1970, and his most recent book, The Sinister Pig,
was published in 2003. Author/journalist Sir Harold Evans will
emcee the April 22nd event. Presenting the 2004 Los Angeles Times
Book Prizes will be Douglas Brinkley, Jennifer Donnelly, Carol
Muske Dukes, Neal Gabler, Michael Kinsley, Jonathan Kirsch, T.
Jefferson Parker, Sally Ride, Alice Sebold and Patricia Seidenbaum.
Seidenbaum is the widow of Art Seidenbaum, and author Jonathan
Kirsch is the son of the late Robert Kirsch. Information about the
awards ceremony and the Book Prize awards program is available at
http://www.latimes.com/bookprizes or by calling 1-800-LATIMES, ext.
72366. The Book Prize awards ceremony will kick off the 10th 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 23-24 on the UCLA campus.
Book Prize Finalists Biography Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
(Penguin Press) Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How
Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (W.W. Norton & Company) Richard
Rhodes, John James Audubon: The Making of an American (Alfred A.
Knopf) Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American
Master (Alfred A. Knopf) Michael J. Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy:
Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt
(Steerforth Press) Current Interest Karen Armstrong, The Spiral
Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf) Edward
Conlon, Blue Blood (Riverhead Books) Michael Dirda, Bound to
Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education -- Essays on
Great Writers and Their Books (W.W. Norton & Company) Ann
Patchett, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship (HarperCollins) Evan
Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and
the New Face of American War (G.P. Putnam's Sons) Fiction Chris
Abani, GraceLand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Russell Banks, The
Darling (HarperCollins) Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux) Colm Toibin, The Master: A Novel (Scribner) Joy
Williams, Honored Guest: Stories (Alfred A. Knopf) Art Seidenbaum
Award for First Fiction Lorraine Adams, Harbor (Alfred A. Knopf)
David Bezmozgis, Natasha and Other Stories (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux) Pete Duval, Rear View: Stories (Mariner Books / Houghton
Mifflin) Susan Fletcher, Eve Green (W.W. Norton & Company) Lisa
Glatt, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (Simon & Schuster)
History Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin
Press) Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev,
and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Presidio Press / Ballantine Books)
Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the
Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (W.W. Norton &
Company) Richard Steven Street, Beasts of the Field: A Narrative
History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913 (Stanford University
Press) Alfred F. Young, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah
Sampson, Continental Soldier (Alfred A. Knopf) Mystery/Thriller
Alan Furst, Dark Voyage: A Novel (Random House) Henning Mankell,
The Return of the Dancing Master [translated from the Swedish by
Laurie Thompson] (The New Press) Charles McCarry, Old Boys
(Overlook Press) Kem Nunn, Tijuana Straits: A Novel (Scribner) Ian
Rankin, A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Little,
Brown) Poetry Richard Howard, Inner Voices: Selected Poems,
1963-2003 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The
Orchard (BOA Editions, Ltd.) Joshua Mehigan, The Optimist: Poems
(Ohio University Press) Spencer Reece, The Clerk's Tale: Poems
(Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin) Catherine Tufariello, Keeping My
Name (Texas Tech University Press) Science and Technology Ann B.
Parson, The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells and Their Promise for
Medicine (Joseph Henry Press / National Academies Press) Lauren
Slater, Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of
the Twentieth Century (W.W. Norton & Company) Alan Tennant, On
the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon
(Alfred A. Knopf) Jonathan Weiner, His Brother's Keeper: A Story
from the Edge of Medicine (Ecco / HarperCollins) Charles Wohlforth,
The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate
Change (North Point Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Young Adult
Fiction Benjamin Alire Saenz, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (Cinco
Puntos Press) Melvin Burgess, Doing It (Henry Holt Books for Young
Readers) Michael Morpurgo, Private Peaceful (Scholastic Press) Adam
Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog (Candlewick Press) Meg Rosoff,
How I Live Now (Wendy Lamb Books / Random House Children's Books)
Finalist Selection Process Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists
were selected by eight three-member committees (the fiction panel
covers both the fiction and first fiction categories). 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. Some 150,000
people attend the event annually. General event information is
available online at http://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 17th edition of the Los
Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing company,
is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country and the
winner of 35 Pulitzer Prizes. The Times publishes five daily
regional editions including the Los Angeles metropolitan area,
Orange and Ventura counties, the San Fernando Valley, and an Inland
Empire edition covering Riverside and San Bernardino counties as
well as a National edition. Additional information about The Times
is available at http://www.latimes.com/mediacenter. DATASOURCE: Los
Angeles Times CONTACT: Mike Lange of the Los Angeles Times,
+1-213-237-3848, Web site: http://www.latimes.com/mediacenter Web
site: http://www.latimes.com/festivalofbooks Web site:
http://www.latimes.com/bookprizes Web site: http://www.latimes.com/
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