The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes announced its finalists and honorees on , recognizing a diverse range of voices and stories. Among those celebrated is author Amy Tan, who will receive the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, honored with the Innovator’s Award.
Tan, best known for her groundbreaking novel The Joy Luck Club
, is being recognized for her substantial connection to the American West and her exploration of multicultural identity. As noted by Sophia Kercher, senior editor for Books at the Los Angeles Times, Tan has transformed American literature by shining a light on the emotional complexities of family, identity and cultural inheritance.
Her work, including novels like The Bonesetter’s Daughter
and her more recent The Backyard Bird Chronicles
, consistently engages with the immigrant experience and its impact on familial bonds. The award acknowledges a career dedicated to portraying these nuanced relationships within the context of the American West.
The Innovator’s Award, presented to We Need Diverse Books, highlights the organization’s significant impact on the publishing landscape. Founded in 2014 as a Twitter campaign, WNDB has become a leading advocate for inclusivity in children’s and young adult literature. According to the organization’s website, in 2014, only 8% of children’s books published in the U.S. Featured authors of color. That number has risen dramatically to 47% in 2023, a change directly attributable to WNDB’s advocacy, grants, and library partnerships. Terry Tang, Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, stated that We Need Diverse Books has played an important role in publishing by championing stories that reflect our world, and opening doors for writers and readers.
Novelist Adam Ross will receive the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for his novel Playworld
, described as a semi-autobiographical story of a teenager growing up in 1980s New York.
The list of finalists across 13 categories showcases a broad spectrum of literary talent. In fiction, authors like Michael Connelly and Saou Ichikawa are recognized. Ichikawa’s debut novel, Hunchback
, was previously longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. Other finalists include Tod Goldberg, Stephen Graham Jones, Mia McKenzie, Andrés Felipe Solano, and Bryan Washington.
Several nominated works grapple with contemporary anxieties, including government-sanctioned historical revisionism and the proliferation of artificial intelligence. What we have is particularly evident in the Current Interest category, featuring titles like Stefan Fatsis’s Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary
and Mariah Blake’s They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals
. Jordan Thomas appears twice as a finalist, with both When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
appearing in both the Current Interest and Science & Technology categories.
The Biography category features Ekow Eshun’s The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them
, which examines Black masculinity through the lives of prominent civil rights activists and thinkers. Other finalists include Joe Dunthorne, Ruth Franklin, Beth Macy, and Amanda Vaill.
The awards also recognize excellence in other genres, including poetry, science fiction, graphic novels, and young adult literature. Finalists in the Young Adult Literature category include K. Ancrum, Idris Goodwin, Jamie Jo Hoang, Trung Le Nguyen, and Hannah V. Sawyerr.
The winners will be revealed at the 46th L.A. Times Book Prizes ceremony on , at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. The ceremony serves as a prelude to the annual L.A. Times Festival of Books, which will take place from to this year.
Robert Kirsch Award
Amy Tan
Innovator’s Award
We Need Diverse Books
The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose
Adam Ross, Playworld: A Novel
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Andy Anderegg, Plum
Krystelle Bamford, Idle Grounds: A Novel
Addie E. Citchens, Dominion: A Novel
Justin Haynes, Ibis: A Novel
Saou Ichikawa translated by Polly Barton, Hunchback: A Novel
Achievement in Audiobook Production, presented by Audible
Molly Jong-Fast (narrator), Matie Argiropoulos (producer); How to Lose Your Mother
Jason Mott, Ronald Peet, and JD Jackson (narrators), Diane McKiernan (producer); People Like Us: A Novel
James Aaron Oh (narrator), Linda Korn (producer); The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel
Imani Perry (narrator), Suzanne Mitchell (producer); Black in Blues
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 (narrators), Kelly Gildea (producer); The Correspondent: A Novel
Biography
Joe Dunthorne, Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance
Ekow Eshun, The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them
Ruth Franklin, The Many Lives of Anne Frank
Beth Macy, Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America
Amanda Vaill, Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution
Current Interest
Jeanne Carstensen, A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis
Stefan Fatsis, Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary
Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America
Gardiner Harris, No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
Fiction
Tod Goldberg, Only Way Out: A Novel
Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Mia McKenzie, These Heathens: A Novel
Andrés Felipe Solano translated by Will Vanderhyden, Gloria: A Novel
Bryan Washington, Palaver: A Novel
Graphic Novel/Comics
Eagle Valiant Brosi, Black Cohosh
Jaime Hernandez, Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection
Michael D. Kennedy, Milk White Steed
Lee Lai, Cannon
Carol Tyler, The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief
History
Char Adams, Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore
Bench Ansfield, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
Jennifer Clapp, Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters
Eli Erlick, Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950
Aaron G. Fountain Jr., High School Students Unite!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America
Mystery/Thriller
Megan Abbott, El Dorado Drive
Ace Atkins, Everybody Wants to Rule the World: A Novel
Lou Berney, Crooks: A Novel About Crime and Family
Michael Connelly, The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel
S.A. Cosby, King of Ashes: A Novel
Poetry
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy
Chet’la Sebree, Blue Opening: Poems
Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things
Devon Walker-Figueroa, Lazarus Species: Poems
Allison Benis White, A Magnificent Loneliness
Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction
Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Jordan Kurella, The Death of Mountains
Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author: A Novel
Adam Oyebanji, Esperance
Silvia Park, Luminous: A Novel
Science & Technology
Mariah Blake, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals
Peter Brannen, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World
Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI
Laura Poppick, Strata: Stories from Deep Time
Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
Young Adult Literature
K. Ancrum, The Corruption of Hollis Brown
Idris Goodwin, King of the Neuro Verse
Jamie Jo Hoang, My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser
Trung Le Nguyen, Angelica and the Bear Prince
Hannah V. Sawyerr, Truth Is: A Novel in Verse
