The Los Angeles Times Wednesday announced finalists for the 39th annual Book Prizes and named three special honorees, including author-naturalist Terry Tempest Williams, whose books often incorporate themes of environmental and social issues.
Williams will receive the 2018 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, which recognizes a writer whose work focuses on the American West, while Library of America will be honored with the Innovator’s Award and Kiese Laymon will be presented with the Christopher Isherwood Prize at the April 12 ceremony at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, during which winners of the 39th annual Book Prizes will be announced.
The ceremony serves as a prologue to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which will be held April 13-14 on the USC campus.
Times Deputy Managing Editor for Arts and Entertainment Julia Turner explained why Williams was singled out for the Kirsch Award.
“Following a year of record-setting wildfires here in California, we felt the time was right to honor Terry Tempest Williams,” she said. “With issues of the environment and climate change becoming increasingly urgent, what better moment to recognize someone who has focused her creative life on writing about the land and fighting for environmental issues in the most elegant and articulate way.”
The Utah native has penned 15 books, including “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place,” published in 1991 and considered an environmental classic. Her other titles include “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” “When Women Were Birds” and, more recently, “The Hour of the Land,” a book of essays commemorating the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.
The 2018 Innovator’s Award, “which spotlights efforts to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future,” was awarded to Library of America for the nonprofit organization’s nearly four decades of “contributions to America’s cultural heritage by preserving the nation’s writing and making it widely available.”
Laymon is the winner of the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for his personal narrative, “Heavy: An American Memoir.” Sponsored by the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, “the award encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary, and honors exceptional work.”
“As soon as the five of us had read it, `Heavy’ became the frontrunner among the hundred or so books we read this year,” said Rick Whitaker, one of the five judges on the panel.
“Laymon’s remarkable memoir about growing up black in America, published post-Obama, was without question the one we felt most urgently deserved the attention of American readers now,” Whitaker said. “Its title is apt in so many ways: It refers to Laymon’s body, to his life, and to his writing, which does not flinch.”
The Book Prizes recognize 51 works in 11 categories: autobiographical prose (the Christopher Isherwood Prize), biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award), graphic novel/comics, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult literature.
Judging panels of writers, who specialize in each genre, select finalists and winners. The complete list of finalists and further information, including past winners, is available at latimes.com/BookPrizes.