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This year, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards ceremony will be free and open to all, as it will be virtual.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in hundreds of canceled and rescheduled entertainment events, ceremonies, galas, and festivals, including the Times Book Festival, which was scheduled for next weekend on the campus of the University of the South of California before being postponed until October. But historical crises and unanticipated changes have a way of forcing creative alternatives.
For the first time since its launch in 1980, the L.A. Times will host its annual book award ceremony of some sort, virtually. The award ceremony, which usually begins the Book Festival, will begin at 8 a.m. Pacific on April 17, when the L.A. Twitter page Times Books will announce the 14 winners, followed by short video acceptance speeches from the award winners.
The awards recognize outstanding literary works published last year in science and technology, history, poetry, biography, fiction, youth literature, and more. This year the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction will premiere. Video speeches will also be shared by three previously announced winners: Walter Mosley for the Robert Kirsch Prize, Keren Taylor for the Innovator Prize and Emily Bernard for the Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.
Finalists in the other categories include Colson Whitehead, Ronan Farrow, Laura Lippman, George Packer, Marlon James, and Steph Cha.
The awards were always presented in a physical ceremony, said Ann Binney, coordinator of special projects for the Times. “Going back to the beginning, maybe there was a lunch or a dinner,” he said, “and it was a smaller matter.” In the late 1990s, the celebration expanded and opened its doors to the public. More than 1,000 guests from the publishing and literary world, as well as members of the general public, attended the event at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where the festivities took place before moving to USC.
“It seems like people are more creative these days,” Binney said of the new format. “In our case with book awards, in just a few short weeks we found a new way to celebrate all of these book finalists and winners virtually. And we all came together, with our diverse knowledge, and we came up with this idea. “
“While we are really going to miss the community that meets in person,” he added, “we have reinvented the celebration for the time that we are now.”
Other major award ceremonies have been forced to adjust their plans after strict measures against group meetings were implemented across the country.
A crowd applauds at the Los Angeles Times Book Awards at USC’s Bovard Auditorium in 2017.
(Michael Owen Baker / For the Times)
Paying tribute to off-Broadway and off-Broadway productions and artists, the Obie Awards ceremony was originally scheduled for May 18, but will now be virtual, though details have not been announced. The money that would have been spent on a traditional ceremony will go to artists whose works were canceled due to the virus.
The Pulitzer Prize Board announced Monday that it will postpone this year’s winners’ announcements for two weeks to give reporters at the pandemic-meeting board more time to evaluate the finalists; its annual awards luncheon, traditionally held in May, was postponed to fall.
Mystery Writers of America also had to cancel their Edgar Awards banquet and symposium, but will announce the winners on their YouTube page on April 30. Meanwhile, the organization has been sharing videos of authors reading their nominated works on its Twitter page.
The National Book Critics Circle Awards, usually presented during an event in New York City, announced this year’s winners through a press release and canceled the reading and ceremony of its finalists days before the scheduled date. Their annual gala was postponed until September.
But virtual press releases are easy to ignore, said Kenneth Turan, a former Times film critic and director of the book’s awards since 1996. “They don’t have the impact of something you can see,” he said. “For people who love books, I find the ceremony extremely exciting every year. … It gives people something to see, something to remember why books are such an exciting part of life. “
In the many years that Turan led and attended the ceremony, he always found something surprising.
“Someone will make a speech that will resonate with you, that will stay with you,” he said, “and it never ceases to amaze me the type of personalities of the people involved, the personalities of the winners, what the people who write write.” these books look and sound alike. “
This year, those personalities will be accessible to anyone who has a phone, even if their owners are homebound.
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