Thread by @latimesbooks

Th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes are about to begin. 📚🏆

Follow along here for updates and winners👇

The first award of the night: The winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose is @kieselaymon for “Heavy: An American Memoir”

“I’m here today because of my mother, my father, my grandmother, and Mississippi.” - @KieseLaymon

The prize for Current Interest goes to @_franciscocantu for “The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border”

“Before the election of Donald Trump. I thought this book would exist as a document of an uglier time.” - @_franciscocantu

The prize for Graphic Novel/Comics goes to @tilliewalden for “On a Sunbeam.”

Tillie Walden couldn’t be here to accept, but she sent a delightful acceptance video in the style of her graphic novel.

The prize for Biography goes to David W. Blight for “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom”

“I thought I was coming here tonight to meet @tarawestover,” Blight jokes of his fellow category nominee. “I have my copy of ‘Educated’ in my bag and I want you to sign it.”

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction goes to Nafissa Thompson-Spires (@tisforthompson) for “Heads of the Colored People”

“I wrote this book because I felt like as a kid and even as a grad student I didn’t see books that reflected the kind of black person I was. ... I wanted to write about weird black people.” -@TisforThompson

The prize for History goes to Julia Boyd for “Travelers In The Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism 1919-1945”

“For anyone out there who has a box of letters in their attic and is thinking of throwing it out, don’t, please. I urge you, take them to your library or archives. They’re history.” - Boyd, who studied a wealth of primary source material for her book

“The world is a bit of mess, to put it mildly, but as long as we go on reading there’s hope for us all.” - Julia Boyd

The prize for Science & Technology goes to Beth Macy (@papergirlmacy) for “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America”

This year, all five finalists in the category of science and technology were women.

“In my writing, there were people I spoke to who died before I was able to get home and type up my interview notes. ... There were times when I really, really wanted to just quit.” - @papergirlmacy

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller goes to @oyinbraithwaite for “My Sister, the Serial Killer”

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature goes to Elizabeth Acevedo (@acevedowrites) for “The Poet X”

The prize for Poetry goes to @cphillipspoet for “Wild is the Wind: Poems”

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction goes to @rebeccamakkai for “The Great Believers: A Novel”

Of the activists during the AIDS crisis, including the ones who helped her research the book: “What we’re sitting here and writing is not nearly as brave as what those people did. ... We have so much to learn from them while they’re still here.” - @rebeccamakkai

“Even when the world isn’t watching, fight like it is. I’m honored to be on that ledge with all of you.” - @rebeccamakkai

Terry Tempest Williams receives the Robert Kirsch Award for her body of work writing about the land, environmental issues, and a vision of humanity towards all living things.

And with that, the 39th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes come to a close.

Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you this weekend at Festival of Books!