The Los Angeles Times has announced the winners of its 46th annual Book Prizes during a ceremony at the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium, per latimes.com.
Hosted by columnist LZ Granderson, the event celebrated literary excellence across 13 competitive categories for works published in 2025. This year’s honours included a lifetime achievement award for author Amy Tan and the recognition of “We Need Diverse Books” for its contributions to industry inclusion.
The 2026 ceremony served as the official opening to the 31st annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. This year’s fiction prize was awarded to Bryan Washington for his novel Palaver, while Justin Haynes secured the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction with Ibis. In the non-fiction categories, Ekow Eshun’s The Strangers took the biography prize, and Bench Ansfield’s Born in Flames was named the winner for history.
The awards also highlighted contemporary issues in technology and society. Karen Hao’s Empire of AI won in the science and technology category, while Brian Goldstone’s There Is No Place for Us, a study of working homelessness in America, received the current interest award. Other notable winners included Megan Abbott for mystery and Silvia Park for science fiction.
Distinguished honours were bestowed upon Amy Tan, who received the Robert Kirsch Award for her career-long contributions to literature. The Innovator’s Award was presented to the organisation We Need Diverse Books, acknowledging its sustained efforts to increase representation within the publishing sector.
The ceremony concludes ahead of the weekend’s Festival of Books, the largest event of its kind in the United States. Organisers expect approximately 155,000 attendees to engage with more than 550 writers and storytellers during the two-day festival.
Established in 1980, the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have become a significant benchmark in the American literary calendar. By tethering the awards to the Festival of Books, the Los Angeles Times integrates professional industry recognition with one of the world’s largest public celebrations of written word and literacy.
