LA Times Book Prize Finalists, and More Awards

PublishersLunch

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize announced finalists in ten categories, with winners to be awarded at a ceremony at USC campus on Friday, April 19. Margaret Atwood will receive the Innovator's Award while Kevin Starr will receive the Kirsch Award. Finalists, who share a fair amount overlap with our Best of the Best of 2012 lists for fiction and nonfiction, include:

Fiction
Jami Attenberg, The Middlesteins: A Novel (Grand Central)
Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue (Harper)
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (Ecco)
Lauren Groff, Arcadia (Voice/Hyperion)
Lydia Millet, Magnificence (Norton)

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
David Abrams, Fobbit (Black Cat, Grove/Atlantic)
Kevin P. Keating, The Natural Order of Things (Aqueous Books)
Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine (St. Martin’s)
Maggie Shipstead, Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Store: A Novel (FSG)

Biography
H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (Doubleday)
Robert Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
Alice Kessler-Harris, A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press)
David Nasaw, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (Penguin Press)
R.J. Smith, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (Gotham Books)

Two of the fiction nominees are contenders for the NBCC prize, as is Robert Caro for biography, and Katherine Boo and Steve Coll for nonfiction (nominated in the current interest category by the LAT), with winners to be named February 27.

In other awards news, The Stella Prize, a new award for Australian women writers, announced its first longlist of twelve books. The winner will be named on April 16.

The Audie Awards also announced finalists in a number of categories recognizing the best in audiobook and spoken-word albums.