Los Angeles Times Names Book Prize Winners for 2003

Posted on May 23, 2003

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were recently announced at an awards ceremony held Saturday evening, April 26, at UCLA's Royce Hall. The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes presented its annual Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement to Larry McMurtry, author of 25 novels including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, of which the movie version won an Academy Award. Nine other Book Prize winners were honored during the 23rd annual awards ceremony. Each winner will receive a $1,000 cash award.

The Robert Kirsch Award, presented by author Jonathan Kirsch, recognizes the body of work of an author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the Western United States and whose contributions to American letters merit body-of-work recognition. There are no finalists for the Robert Kirsch Award. The late Robert Kirsch served as The Times' book critic for more than 25 years prior to his death in 1980. He was a novelist, editor and teacher as well as one of the nation's foremost book critics.

Award-winning author A. Scott Berg served as ceremony emcee. Berg is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and author of the biographies Lindbergh, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius and Goldwyn.

Book Prize Winners

Biography -- Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 (Alfred A. Knopf). Presented by Eric Lax.
Current Interest -- Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (University of Minnesota Press). Presented by George Plimpton.
Fiction -- Ian McEwan, Atonement (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday). Presented by John Rechy.
First Fiction (Art Seidenbaum Award) -- Arthur Phillips, Prague (Random House). Presented by Susan Straight.
History -- Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press). Presented by Ronald Steel.
Mystery/Thriller -- George P. Pelecanos, Hell to Pay (Little, Brown and Company). Presented by T. Jefferson Parker.
Poetry -- Cynthia Zarin, The Watercourse: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf). Presented by Quincy Troupe.
Science and Technology -- Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins Publishers). Presented by Dava Sobel.
Young Adult Fiction -- M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press). Presented by Gayle Anderson.

Finalists and winners in the nine subject categories were selected by eight three-member committees. Fiction category judges also chose the first fiction category finalists and winner. Most of the judges are published authors and serve a two-year term. None of the judges, except for the Kirsch award, are current Los Angeles Times employees. There is no nationality requirement for author nominees in any category. With the exception of significant new translations of a deceased author's work, all authors should be living at the time of qualifying U.S. publication.