Festival of Books: Biographers create a vivid portrait of the 20th century

For those who didn't go to hear Rodney King's conversation with Patt Morrison (and wait some time for King to show), the best bet for the same 12:30 p.m. time slot Saturday was an L.A. TImes Festival of Books panel discussion titled "Biography: The American Century."

Moderated by A. Scott Berg, the author of considerable biographies of Max Perkins and Charles A. Lindbergh, panelists included Richard Reeves; Jim Newton, the L.A. Times editor-at-large; and John A. Farrell, author of "Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned," which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography on Friday night.

Panelists spoke about what inspired them to write biographies. Reeves, who has penned bestselling biographies of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, talked about his most recent book,  "Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift" on the American efforts to be get humanitarian relief to the beleaguered city in 1947. He got a laugh when he noted that he took on the assignment because Newton and another biographer had cornered the market on Eisenhower before he could get to that president.

PHOTOS: Festival of Books

More seriously, Reeves said he took on the airlift as a response to the negative publicity U.S. servicemen received for the horrific photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I wanted to do something that showed America as I saw it," Reeves said. He thought readers should be reminded that when Berlin was surrounded by more than half a million Soviet troops, American servicemen were mobilized quickstep and flew tons of supplies to the city.

L.A. Times Festival of Books begins!

The tents are up, the authors are arriving, the schedules are in place for the L.A. Times Festival of Books that kicked off Saturday morning on the USC campus.

Here's an early look at the festival doings.

And check out the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes awarded Friday night.

-- Mary Forgione

Alex Shakar, Stephen King win Times Book Prizes

Alex Shakar's novel "Luminarium," about the role technology and spirituality play in shaping people's reality, and Stephen King's "11/22/63," about a time traveler who attempts to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination, were among the winners Friday at the 32^nd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.

The awards to Shakar in the fiction category and to King in mystery-thrillers were among 12 presented at USC's Bovard Auditorium in a ceremony that launched this weekend's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at the campus.

More than 400 authors will participate in readings, signings, panel discussions, musical performances and other events. The festival, which moved to USC in 2011 after 15 years at UCLA, runs through Sunday. About 150,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Shakar's "Luminarium" prevailed over four competitors that included two National Book Critics Circle Award winners: Julie Otsuka's "The Buddha in the Attic" and Edith Pearlman's "Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories."

King's competition included A.D. Miller's "Snowdrops," a contemporary thriller set in Russia that was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The winning book was a departure for King, the author of scores of volumes of contemporary horror, suspense and science fiction whose early titles included "Carrie" and "The Shining."

Winner of the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction was Ismet Prcic for "Shards," a provocative debut novel about a young Bosnian who has fled his war-torn homeland and is struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California.

At Bovard, hundreds of book lovers filled the seats and listened with rapt attention as the contenders were introduced.

The pony-tailed Prcic bounded to the stage in black shirt and pants, with a patterned tie draped over his shoulders. "I dress myself," he quipped, adding: "I didn't think this was going to happen." He went on to thank fans who read books "all the way through."

Pete Hautman won the Young Adult Literature prize for "The Big Crunch," an adolescent love story. "I think I used up all my adrenaline," he said in accepting the honor. "Speaking for all the authors desperate for affirmation, this is really cool."

The prizes honor extraordinary literary accomplishment in 12 categories.

Contenders included poet Linda Norton, first-time novelist Chad Harbach ("The Art of Fielding") and young-adult literature authors Maggie Stiefvater and Libba Bray.

Although most winners were announced Friday night, two recipients had already been identified. Receiving the Robert Kirsch Award, for the body of work of a Western writer, was Rudolfo Anaya, praised as the "godfather and guru of Chicano literature." The online writers community Figment was recognized with the Innovator's Award. Previous winners of the Innovator's Award, which focuses on cutting-edge business models, technology or applications of narrative art, were Dave Eggers and Powell's Books of Portland, the first bookstore ever honored.

Other 2011 Book Prize winners:

Biography: John A. Farrell, "Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned" (Doubleday)

Current Interest: Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Graphic Novel: Carla Speed McNeil, "Finder: Voice" (Dark Horse)

History: Richard White, "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America" (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Poetry: Carl Phillips, "Double Shadow: Poems" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Science & Technology: Sylvia Nasar, "Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius" (Simon & Schuster)

Young Adult Literature: Pete Hautman, "The Big Crunch" (Scholastic Press)

A complete list of 2011 finalists and past winners, as well as eligibility and judging information, can be found at latimesbookprizes.com.

 

-- Martha Groves

Photo: John A. Farrell is handed a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography from Eric Lax, right. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha, Los Angeles Times

There will be a fiction prize tonight: Thoughts on the Pulitzer controversy

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt of remarks delivered by Times book critic David L. Ulin at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony Friday evening, April 20, at USC's Bovard Auditorium.

Thank you, and welcome to the 32nd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.  

I want to start tonight by reassuring you that we will be giving a fiction prize. More than one, in fact, as well as awards in many other categories, including poetry, biography, current interest, science writing, poetry … the list goes on. And yet, at the risk of sounding like a contrarian (or, even worse, a Pollyanna), I’d like to talk for a minute about what happened on Monday at the Pulitzers, when the board decided not to give a fiction prize. Was this, as some have argued, a slap in the face to American fiction? Or does it offer, rather, an opportunity to talk about how robust our literature has been and remains? For me, it’s the latter — as the shortlists of this year’s major literary prizes attest.

Look at the finalists for the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner, the National Book Critics Circle Award and The Times' Book Prizes, to name just a few, and you’ll find an almost total lack of overlap: 19 books for 23 slots. What does this mean? On the one hand, it suggests the breadth of good fiction being written, the sheer amount of work that sticks. But even more, it reminds us of the vagaries of awards, the subjective nature of the process, which to me has always meant that prizes are about the conversation they stir up as much as they are about who does or does not win.

When it comes to the Pulitzers, the decision not to award a fiction prize has led to a weeklong national discussion about (yes) literary fiction and what it means. That’s a good thing under any circumstance — as is the fact that three books, as opposed to one, have occupied the public discourse, and (let’s not forget) the marketplace. And it resonates, too, with why we’re here tonight: both to honor our prize recipients and to participate in an ongoing conversation about books and reading, a conversation that will continue over the next two days at USC. What we celebrate tonight are individual titles, 50 of them, as well as Robert Kirsch awardee Rudolfo Anaya and the Innovator’s Award recipient Figment. But we also pay tribute to the act of writing, and of reading, and even more, the interplay between them, the engagement by which we become, and maintain, a community.

 -- David L. Ulin

Photos: Los Angeles Times Book Prize logo; Pulitzer Prize medal      Credit: L.A. Times; www.pulitzer.org/theMedal 

L.A. Times' Book Prizes and Festival of Books: Coming right up!

The 2012 Festival of Books is almost upon us: Panel sessions get started Saturday at 10 a.m. Before that happens, though, the Los Angeles Times' Book Prizes will be presented Friday night at USC's Bovard Auditorium. There are a number of ways to get prepared.

Want to attend the Book Prizes event? For the first time in a while, you can. Prizes will be awarded in 10 categories: biography, current interest, fiction, poetry, first fiction, graphic novel, science and technology, mystery/thriller, and young adult literature, with special awards being given to Rudulfo Anaya and the collaborative teen-writing project Figment. Tickets are $10 and available until 5 p.m. via Evenbrite; the Book Prize ceremony begins at 7:30 p.m.

Can't come? Follow the official @LATimesbooksTwitter feed for news of the award winners as they are announced. I'll be working the feed's levers, so keep an eye out for behind-the-scenes photos and whatever insights I might be able to share -- if, say, for example, I find an ice-cream truck -- throughout the entire festival. (For the occasional aside -- if, say, I eat too much ice cream -- you can follow me @paperhaus.)

Have you gotten panel tickets yet? The Festival of Books is presenting more than 100 panels and with more than 400 authors. Entry is free, but you can reserve tickets online with a $1 (each) processing fee in advance. Getting in line at the day of the festival usually works just fine, but some panels have already sold out.

Of course, there are lots of events that do not require tickets, including hundreds of booths with books,  book-related activities and organizations, poetry readings, a food court, and celebrities at the L.A. Times Stage. You might want to arrive early to get a front-row seat to see John Cusack talk about "The Raven," the upcoming movie in which he plays Edgar Allan Poe, Saturday at 2:30 p.m., or for Sunday at 1:20 p.m., when Betty White talks about being Betty White -- her book is "Betty and Friends: My Life at the Zoo."

Of course, the festival has its own Twitter feed, @latimesfob, which is staffed by the event organizers who are helpful and knowledgeable. Follow to learn about sold-out panels, scheduling changes or any other need-to-know tidbits.

Among the most common questions festival-goers have are, "Where is this panel I'm trying to find?" and "Where is the food court?" No need to ask if you're carrying a smartphone. For the second year in a row, the Festival of Books has a free app, for both iPhone and Android. If you downloaded last year's, it will just update. This year's app has even more features than last year's, including a social media tool to share your photos in a Facebook album and includes a super-handy scheduling tool.

If for some reason you can't make it to USC but want to keep up with the festival as it happens Saturday and Sunday, check in right here on Jacket Copy.

RELATED:

2011 Book Prize finalists announced

Pictures: 2011 festival's pre-opening

2011 Festival of Books panel coverage

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The 2011 Festival of Books. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

 

This Sunday: Figment, Charles Dickens, Etgar Keret and more

It’s been a busy week around The Times' book department as we get ready for the Festival of Books in just two weeks (April 21 and 22) at USC. We’ve been planning coverage leading up to the festival and thinking about the great writers, editors and publishing figures coming to town to talk about our favorite subject: books. If you haven’t had time to check the lineup of outstanding panels, conversations and other presentations, please check it here.

   Meanwhile, a relatively new communication platform and a decidedly old one highlight our book coverage on Sunday. The new one is Figment, the social networking site primarily for teens, where budding writers can critique their work and the work of others. The site’s slogan is “Write Yourself In,” and in just 15 months, more than 200,000 young people have done so and more than 350,000 individual pieces have been posted. According to Jacob Lewis, a former managing editor at the New Yorker and Portfolio who is in charge of the site’s day-to-day operation, they add 1,000 new pieces a day.

"It’s essential that our users feel a sense of ownership," Lewis told Times book critic David Ulin, who writes about Figment’s rapid rise for this Sunday's Arts & Book section. Currently on Figment, according to Ulin, is a mix that includes the first chapter of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” as well as Rachel Hawkins’ third “Hex Hall” novel, “Spell Bound.”  “You’re as likely to find a reference to Tom Waits or William S. Burroughs as to ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘The Hunger Games,' ” Ulin writes.  “Its success, then, simply reaffirms what readers everywhere have always known: that literature and reading aren’t going anywhere.” The site’s founders, Lewis and New Yorker writer Dana Goodyear, will be honored on April 20 at the L.A. Times Book Prizes with the Innovator’s Award. 

The decidedly old platform is letter-writing, and this Sunday we look at 450 examples of Charles Dickens' masterful epistolary prose that have been gathered for “The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens,” edited by Jenny Hartley. Our reviewer novelist Nicholas Delbanco notes that “By the time he died, at 58, he was world-famous and besieged with mail; he answered correspondence promptly and received by his own attestation 'three or four score letters every day.' ”  That’s a lot of mail to keep up with. No wonder he died at 58. Think not? Try sitting down and writing a letter — snail mail, that is — to your Aunt Bruce in Cincinnati.  One of our favorite examples from Dickens, which Delbanco notes with pleasure, is this snippet he wrote, when 21, to Maria Beadnell, who had rejected his advances: “I have often said before and I say again I have borne more from you than I do believe any creature breathing ever bore from a woman before.”

More after the jump

2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists announced

What do Michael Ondaatje, Manning Marable and Stephen King have in common? They're all in the running for 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The finalists -- five each, in 10 categories -- were announced Tuesday. The 32nd annual prizes will be awarded at a public ceremony April 20 at USC's Bovard Auditorium.

The Robert Kirsch Award for significant contribution to American letters will be presented to Rudolfo Anaya, it was also announced. Anaya's 1972 bestselling coming-of-age story, “Bless Me, Ultima,” is a seminal work of Chicano literature; in 2002, for this and subsequent books, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. 

Figment, a collaborative digital writing community for teens, will receive the third Innovator's Award. Its previous winners are writer and publisher Dave Eggers and Powell's Books.

Awards will be presented in current interest, fiction, first fiction, biography, history, mystery-thriller, science and technology, graphic novel, poetry and young adult literature. King's book about time travel and the JFK assassination, “11/22/63,” is in the running in the mystery-thriller category. His competition includes A.D. Miller's “Snowdrops,” which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Two National Book Award finalists are competing in the fiction category: Julie Otsuka's “The Buddha in the Attic” and Edith Pearlman's short story collection, “Binocular Vision.” Among the books they'll be facing is Michael Ondaatje's “The Cat's Table.”

For the second year in a row, veteran author Jim Woodring is a finalist in the graphic novel category. Woodring is the only graphic novelist to be a two-time finalist for the award, now in its third year.

The young adult category boasts 2004 National Book Award winner Pete Hautman for his latest, “The Big Crunch,” and Printz Award winner Libba Bray, for the book “Beauty Queens.”

The finalists for biography include Manning Marable, who died just days before his long-awaited “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” was published, and Alexandra Styron, who in “Reading My Father: A Memoir,” writes of her father William, best known for “Sophie's Choice.”

Other notable finalists include Bruce Smith in poetry, James Gleick in science and technology, Ioan Grillo in current interest, Adam Hochschild in history and Chad Harbach for first fiction. The complete list of finalists is after the jump.

The L.A. Times Book Prizes are awarded the night before the weekend's Festival of Books, which will take place at USC. Tickets for the Book Prizes ceremony will be available for purchase on March 26; check the Festival of Books website for details.

L.A. Times book prize winner Adam Hines and 'Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One'

Adam Hines, 27, won the L.A. Times book prize for graphic novel Friday night for his big, ambitious work, "Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One."

"I started working on this book back in 2002, when I was 18, and only just finished last March, and that's a long time to work on something that you don't know will be of any good use to anyone," Hines said in his acceptance speech.

Hines went to Art Center in Pasadena for "a few weeks before dropping out." He talked about "Duncan the Wonder Dog" with our sibling blog Hero Complex.

HC: Your book tackles philosophy in a very unique way. Did you study philosophy? How did you assign different philosophical perspectives to different animals?

AH: I’ve never studied anything in any sort of “official” context; I’m an amateur in every respect. Philosophy as a practice is just endlessly fascinating to me, but you can get into trouble when using it as a guide for character motivations or actions. People just aren’t that intellectually explicable. But I wanted early on to show that not only are wild animals very different from humans, but every animal is very different from every other kind of animal. And as for assigning them different perspectives, there was no set system or approach. It was only what felt right for that character or scene.

HC: What about mathematics?

AH: Mathematics are a big part of the book, and a huge overriding part of the series, and will get more prominent as the books go on. For “Show One,” though, it is mostly used as framing devices, ways to set up the panels. I wanted it to always be there, but mostly in the background, supporting the story. 

Read more of the interview with Adam Hines here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Jennifer Egan wins L.A. Times book prize in fiction

This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad," won the L.A. Times 2010 book prize for fiction, it was announced in a ceremony in Los Angeles on Friday night. The top nonfiction prize went to Micahel Lewis for his book "The Big Short."

Read more about the prizes here.

The Los Angeles Times 2010 Book Prize winners:

•Fiction: Jennifer Egan, "A Visit From the Goon Squad" (Knopf)

•Nonfiction: Michael Lewis, "The Big Short" (W.W. Norton)

•Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Peter Bognanni, "The House of Tomorrow" (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)

•Biography: Laura Hillenbrand, "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience & Redemption" (Random House)

•Graphic Novel: Adam Hines, "Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One" (AdHouse Books)

•History: Thomas Powers, "The Killing of Crazy Horse" (Knopf)

•Mystery-Thriller: Tom Franklin, "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" (William Morrow)

•Poetry: Maxine Kumin, "Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010" (W. W. Norton & Company)

•Science & Technology: Oren Harman, "The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness" (W. W. Norton & Company)

•Young Adult Literature: Megan Whalen Turner, "A Conspiracy of Kings" (Greenwillow/HarperCollins)

For the record, 12:38 a.m. April 30: In an earlier version of this post, the title of the winner of the fiction prize was incorrectly given as "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience & Redemption" in the list of winners.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Jennifer Egan. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times

Book prize nominee: Karl Stevens

Karl Stevens' "The Lodger" is one of the finalists for the graphic novel award at the L.A. Times book prizes on Friday. Our sibling blog Hero Complex is talking to each of the five finalists this week, leading up to Friday's awards.

First up is Stevens, who self-published "The Lodger" -- a semi-autobiographical story about dropping out of art school, losing his girlfriend and moving into an ex-professor's house. 

NC: How true is "The Lodger?

KS: It’s pretty true. It’s strange because there are parts [that are] like writing dialogue. I’m not like tape-recording every conversation that I have. There were things that happened that I would just tweak to make it more interesting or more funny. They’re all real names. There was a girl I dated named Ann. Cookie's real. She’s outside my door right now. They’re fantastic. Tony was great. After I dropped out of art school, Tony kind of took me under his wing, and I would come over here all the time for dinners and stuff, and he would introduce me to other artists and teachers, and he would come by to the place I was living in a different part of the city, and kind of like mentor me. It was really sweet. And when I needed a place, it just happened to coincide, because they would always have people living in the house, cause it’s really big, and I think it’s good for their marriage....

NC: There’s a subtlety to your art that you don’t normally see in comics.

KS: That’s my whole thing. That’s what I was trying to stammer out earlier, that I really want to make comics very subtle. For the past 100 years there have only been a few exceptions, and I feel like that can really be explored. Even the ones that are about just people, even those have a certain kind of exaggerated quality that just seems false. I’m going to shut up before I start ranting.

NC: Who would you list as your influences, then?

KS: Rembrandt. He’s pretty good. He’s pretty amazing. I aspire to be more like him.

Read the complete interview here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: "The Lodger" by Karl Stevens