Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been awarded every year since 1980. Times book editor Art Seidenbaum started the program that year as a tribute to Robert Kirsch, the paper's longtime book critic, who had died in 1980. The prizes are presented each April at USC's Bovard Auditorium on the evening before the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books opens.

The 2025 edition covered thirteen categories: fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award), biography, autobiographical prose (the Christopher Isherwood Prize), current interest, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science fiction and fantasy (the Ray Bradbury Prize), science and technology, graphic novel/comics, young adult literature and audiobook production. In most categories a panel of writers who specialize in that genre reads the year's books, names about five finalists in February, and chooses the winner. The Times also gives the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement to a writer with deep ties to the American West, and an Innovator's Award for work that carries books and storytelling forward.

Books first published in the United States during the previous calendar year, considered by genre panels of writers in each category.