Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times recently announced its 30th Annual Book Prizes and its April Book Festival held at UCLA April 24th & 25th. This year they have two new prizes, The Innovator's Award, awarded to Dave Eggers, and the Graphic Novel Prize (the first specifically designated prize in the United States according to the LA Times).

2009 Robert Kirsch Award goes to Evan S. Connell

The rest of the awards (including the Graphic Novel Prize) will be announced at the book festival in April.

Here are the finalists:

Biography Finalists

• Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
• Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (W.W. Norton & Co.)
• Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic (Random House)
• Melvin Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon)
• Kenneth Whyte, The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (Counterpoint Press)

Current Interest Finalists

• Dave Cullen, Columbine (TWELVE/Hachette Book Group)
• Dave Eggers, Zeitoun (McSweeney’s Press)
• Tracy Kidder, The Strength in What Remains (Random House)
• Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf)
• T.R. Reid, The Healing of America: The Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare (The Penguin Press)

Fiction Finalists

• Jill Ciment, Heroic Measures (Pantheon)
• Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat (Europa Editions)
• Michelle Huneven, Blame (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Kate Walbert, A Short History of Women (Scribner)
• Rafael Yglesias, A Happy Marriage (Scribner)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Finalists

• Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Paul Harding, Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press)
• Philipp Meyer, American Rust (Spiegel & Grau)
• Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W.W. Norton & Co.)
• Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Graphic Novel Finalists

• Gilbert Hernandez, Luba (A Love and Rockets Book) (Fantagraphics Books)
• Taiyo Matsumoto, GoGo Monster (VIZ Media)
• David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
• Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (Oni Press)
• Joe Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., LLC)

History Finalists

• Richard Holmes, Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon)
• Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (The Penguin Press)
• Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950 – 1963 (Oxford University Press)
• Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (University of North Carolina Press)
• Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789 – 1815 (Oxford University Press)

Mystery / Thriller Finalists

• Megan Abbott, Bury Me Deep (Simon & Schuster)
• David Ellis, The Hidden Man (Putnam)
• Attica Locke, Black Water Rising (HarperCollins)
• Val McDermid, A Darker Domain (HarperCollins)
• Stuart Neville, The Ghosts of Belfast (SOHO Press)

Poetry Finalists

• Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books)
• Amy Gerstler, Dearest Creature (Penguin Poets)
• Tom Healy, What the Right Hand Knows (Four Way Books)
• Brenda Hillman, Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press)
• Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, }Open Interval{, (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Science & Technology Finalists

• Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe (Pantheon)
• Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group)
• Bill Streever, Cold: Adventures in the Worlds’ Frozen Places (Little, Brown & Company)
• Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group)
• Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science (W.W. Norton & Co)

Young Adult Literature Finalists

• James Cross Giblin, The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy (HarperCollins)
• Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers)
• Elizabeth Partridge, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary (Viking Children’s Books/Penguin Group)
• Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)