The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were first awarded in 1980, with the idea of honoring literary excellence and celebrating the community of readers in Los Angeles. The inspiration of former Times book editor Art Seidenbaum, those first prizes included awards in four book categories – fiction, history, general nonfiction and poetry – as well as the inaugural Robert Kirsch Award, which was presented to Wallace Stegner for his extraordinary career and dedication to the literature of the west.
2017Â WINNERS
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Jenny Zhang, Sour Heart, Lenny / Random House
Biography
Laura Dassow Walls,  Henry David Thoreau: A Life, University Of Chicago Press
The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose Winner
Benjamin Taylor, The Huế and Cry at Our House: A Year Remembered, Penguin Books
Current Interest
Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Viking
Fiction
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West, Riverhead Books
Graphic Novel / Comics
Leslie Stein, Present, Drawn and Quarterly
History
Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, W. W. Norton & Company
Mystery / Thriller
Joyce Carol Oates, A Book of American Martyrs, Ecco
Poetry
Patricia Smith, Incendiary Art: Poems, TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press
Science & Technology
Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Penguin Press
Young Adult Literature
Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down, Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
