Entertainment
L.A. Times Book Prize winners named in a ceremony filled with support for USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum
The spotlight shined on great literature Friday night at the 44th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, where 13 winners took the stage to celebrate their honors and, in some cases, call attention to the free speech controversy unfolding on campus.
A political undercurrent ran through the night’s speeches following the university’s cancellation of a commencement speech by pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum. Emily Carroll, who won the Book Prizes’ graphic novel/comic category, ended her speech by calling on USC to restore Tabassum’s appearance, “so that she may inspire her community of peers with, as she’s put it, her ‘message of hope.’ Also, I would like to express my own solidarity with Asna and also my solidarity with Palestine.”
Applause drowned out Carroll’s words at times. Later, Tananarive Due, who won for science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction, used her speech to add: “As we face the horrors in our in our cities, in Gaza and elsewhere, and witness true-life racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, let us honor the courage of young people.” They, Due said, have been the drivers of change throughout history.
Upon accepting the award for the current interest category, Roxanna Asgarian added her support for Tabassum. “She earned her right to speak,” Asgarian said. “Let her speak.” Amber McBride, who won for young adult literature concluded her speech by saying, “Free Palestine.”
The focus for the rest of the evening were the books themselves — more than 60 finalists plus three special honors. Jane Smiley accepted the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, which pays tribute to a writer with a substantial connection to the American West. The L.A.-born author, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1992 for her novel “A Thousand Acres,” gave a brief, heartfelt speech, noting, “I love to write novels, I love to go for walks and look around. And I think the greatest pleasure of the novelist’s life is curiosity.”
Claire Dederer received the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.”
“‘Monsters,’ a book-length expansion of an essay on the problematic relationship between masculinity and fame, considers how we come to love art made by less than perfect humans,” read the selection committee’s praise. “Dederer engages the essayist form at its best and the result is both critical, literary and provocative.”
“These are really, really dark days,” said Dederer, accepting the award. “And I’m so grateful for this bright moment.”
The final special honor went to Access Books, which received the Innovator’s Award for its work renovating school libraries to enhance access to books and literary resources for underserved students and communities.
This year’s Book Prizes featured a new category:achievement in audiobook production. That award, which honors performance, production and innovation in storytelling — given in collaboration with Audible — went to Dion Graham and Elishia Merricks for “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir.” The judges noted Graham’s “transcendent” narration of musician Sly Stone’s “percussive and almost musical writing” in his memoir.
Ed Park’s novel “Same Bed Different Dreams” took the fiction prize. The selection committee singled it out for being “as playful as it is moving, as serious as it is otherworldly and as funny as it is intellectually stimulating.”
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction went to Shannon Sanders’ debut, “Company: Stories,” which features 13 stories that follow the lives of a multi-generational Black family from the 1960s to the 2000s in cities including Atlantic City, N.J., New York and Washington, D.C. “The prose is magnificent, mature and breathtakingly precise, and the collection resounds with a sensitivity and wisdom rarely seen in a debut,” noted the judges.
Gregg Hecimovich won for biography with “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” about a slave who escaped from a Southern plantation and spent the rest of her life evading capture. The book was chosen out of more than 100 entries, with the selection committee writing, “Through Hecimovich’s painstaking historical detective work and keen literary analysis, the reader is rewarded with a captivating and vivid portrait of a life once stolen by enslavers and long robbed of recognition. This is at once a startling and original work.”
Carroll won for “A Guest in the House,” an adult horror story about a woman who marries a dentist and discovers there is a mystery to be solved when it comes to the death of his former wife. “A fleshy, sensuous journey that pushes the limits of the medium in ways that only Carroll can. A skin-crawling gem, not to be missed,” wrote the selection committee.
Joya Chatterji took home the prize for history with “Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century,” which limns the region’s trajectory from British colony to three complex, independent nations.
The mystery/thriller award went to Ivy Pochoda for “Sing Her Down.” The unique nail-biter takes place in the shadows of L.A.’s homeless camps, run-down motels and dark alleys, following women who have turned — for various reasons — to a life of crime. The judges, including Alex Segura, Wanda Morris and mystery fiction critic Oline Cogdill, wrote, “Pochoda brilliantly explores her characters and this setting, while sifting through myriad literary tropes, including allusions to Macbeth, mythology, even a bit of a Greek chorus.”
Airea D. Matthews’ “Bread and Circus” was honored in the poetry category. Matthews is an associate professor of creative writing and the co-director of the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College. She was named the 2022-23 poet laureate of Philadelphia.
The prize for science fiction fiction was given to Due for “The Reformatory.” The book is part horror, part historical fiction in its examination of life under Jim Crow law in the South.
Eugenia Cheng’s “Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths” nabbed the prize for science & technology, with the judges writing, “Beginning with a dedication to readers who think math isn’t for them, Cheng shows us that not only is math for all of us, but so is the act of searching for meaning in shapes, patterns and symbols that simultaneously seem like they have nothing to do with us and also everything to do with who we are as a species.”
Cheng uttered perhaps the most helpful line to all the writers in the room, noting to applause, “If you have ever been made to feel bad at math, you didn’t fail math, math failed you.”
The story of a 12-year-old blue-skinned girl called Inmate Eleven who is being groomed to be a partner to a white-skinned teen clone, and future president of Bible Boot, is the plot of McBride’s “Gone Wolf,” which won for young adult literature. “McBride mixes American history with speculative fiction to dissect melancholia and political anxiety for young people who are living through uncertain times — in the future and today,” wrote the judges.
The full list of finalists and winners is below.
Achievement in Audiobook Production
Maria Bamford, narrator, “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere”
Sophia Bush, narrator, “Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver”
Helena de Groot, lead producer, “Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver”
Dion Graham, narrator, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir”
Kerri Kolen, executive producer, “Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver”
Helen Laser, narrator, “Yellowface”
Adam Lazarre-White, narrator, “All the Sinners Bleed”
Elishia Merricks, producer, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir”
Elishia Merricks, producer, “All the Sinners Bleed”
Suzanne Franco Mitchell, director/producer, “Yellowface”
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Stephen Buoro, “The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: A Novel”
Sheena Patel, “I’m a Fan: A Novel”
Shannon Sanders, “Company: Stories”
James Frankie Thomas, “Idlewild: A Novel”
Ghassan Zeineddine, “Dearborn”
Biography
Leah Redmond Chang, “Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power”
Gregg Hecimovich, “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative”
Jonny Steinberg, “Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage”
Elizabeth R. Varon, “Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South”
David Waldstreicher, “The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence”
The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose
Claire Dederer, “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma”
Current Interest
Bettina L. Love, “Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal”
Roxanna Asgarian, “We Were Once A Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America”
Zusha Elinson, “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15”
Cameron McWhirter, “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15”
Christina Sharpe, “Ordinary Notes”
Raja Shehadeh, “We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir”
Fiction
Susie Boyt, “Loved and Missed”
Yiyun Li, “Wednesday’s Child: Stories”
Elizabeth McKenzie, “The Dog of the North: A Novel”
Ed Park, “Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel”
Justin Torres, “Blackouts: A Novel”
Graphic Novel/Comics
Derek M. Ballard, “Cartoonshow”
Matías Bergara, “CODA”
Emily Carroll, “A Guest in the House”
Sammy Harkham, “Blood of the Virgin”
Chantal Montellier, “Social Fiction”
Simon Spurrier, “CODA”
History
Ned Blackhawk, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History”
Joya Chatterji, “Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century”
Malcolm Harris, “Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World”
Blair L.M. Kelley, “Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class”
Nikki M. Taylor, “Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance”
Innovator’s Award
Access Books
Mystery/Thriller
Lou Berney, “Dark Ride: A Thriller”
S. A. Cosby, “All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel”
Jordan Harper, “Everybody Knows: A Novel”
Cheryl A. Head, “Time’s Undoing: A Novel”
Ivy Pochoda, “Sing Her Down: A Novel”
Poetry
K. Iver, “Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco”
Airea D. Matthews, “Bread and Circus: Poems”
Maggie Millner, “Couplets: A Love Story”
Jenny Molberg, “The Court of No Record: Poems”
Simon Shieh, “Master: Poems”
Robert Kirsch Award
Jane Smiley
Science & Technology
Eugenia Cheng, “Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths”
Jeff Goodell, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet”
Jaime Green, “The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos”
Caspar Henderson, “A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous”
Zach Weinersmith, “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”
Kelly Weinersmith, “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”
Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction
Tananarive Due, “The Reformatory: A Novel”
Daniel Kraus, “Whalefall”
Victor LaValle, “Lone Women: A Novel”
V. E. Schwab, “The Fragile Threads of Power”
E. Lily Yu, “Jewel Box: Stories”
Young Adult Literature
Jennifer Baker, “Forgive Me Not”
Olivia A. Cole, “Dear Medusa”
Kim Johnson, “Invisible Son”
Amber McBride, “Gone Wolf”
Sarah Myer, “Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story”
The Invite is a remake of the Spanish film The People Upstairs, itself based on a play by the same director Cesc Gay. With all remakes, the question is: What’s this version bringing to the table. In this case, it’s a rock solid cast with great chemistry and some very snappy direction by Olivia Wilde.
Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) are a dysfunctional couple with some noisily amorous upstairs neighbours. They invite Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz) to dinner and hijinks ensue.
There’s a lot to like about The Invite. Each member of the cast is funny in their own way. Rogen plays his usual schlub but his character is more nuanced than usual, with the rapid-fire jokes masking a deep frustration and melancholy. Wilde‘s Angela is a persnickety neurotic, but it’s not hard to see why. Cruz plays a sultry therapist who’s in permanent flirt mode but is also holding something back. Norton steals the show with a quietly hilarious performance as a retired firefighter who is all too eager to share his new age insights. The way each person interacts with the other results in a rollercoaster of cringe comedy, acerbic satire and genuine gut-busters. This is a film that relies entirely on performance and actually succeeds.
The story itself is a little masterpiece. Adapted from Gay’s original by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, the dialogue is quick, laden with not-very-subtextual motivations and always up to something. It’s very even-handed, and all the characters are sympathetic but flawed in amusing ways. Watching the increasingly desperate Joe and Angela bouncing off the Hawk and Piña is both funny and excruciating. Joe’s attraction to Piña is played fairly straight, but Angela’s attraction to Hawk becomes side-splitting as she pours out her soul to his Zen-calm ears and gets responses that make her even more attracted to him and by the end she’s practically hyperventilating.
The Invite does take something of a turn towards the end, although the film is in a state of continual twist throughout. This final shift throws the couples’ dysfunction into stark terms but doesn’t ruin anything. In the end, it moves from a somewhat misanthropic tone to a sincere and compassionate one. It skillfully makes you complicit in Joe and Angela’s spatting and then forces you to reconsider. The comedy is so intense throughout the film that when this happens it might lose some viewers, but it’s well-earned, true to the characters and it’s a very satisfying payoff.
The Invite is a small film that feels like a return to a better era in cinema. It’s a remake that is worth watching for its performances, and it’s very, very funny. It’s the sort of film that can be watched at home given its confined setting, but it generates enough laughs that seeing with an audience is a real pleasure.
Entertainment
Jesús Ortiz Paz and Jimmy Humilde took their legal dispute to Instagram. Here’s the breakdown
What started off as a trailblazing music partnership between música mexicana band Fuerza Regida and L.A. label Rancho Humilde has now fizzled into a sticky online drama.
On Saturday, Fuerza Regida frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz, better known as JOP, took to his personal Instagram account to post a statement addressing the band’s ongoing legal battle with the independent label led by music mogul Jimmy Humilde, who signed the band in 2018.
“To everyone who supports Fuerza Regida, you deserve to hear our music,” Ortiz Paz wrote in a public statement. “You deserve to see us perform at the World Cup. You deserve to listen to us on the MLB [Major League Baseball] album.”
This statement, which has since disappeared from JOP’s Instagram post, alleged that music created by the música mexicana group “keeps disappearing.”
Among the songs that have been taken down from streaming platforms by Rancho Humilde are “Triston,” “Todos nos Shipean” and “67,” according to the band’s publicist.
In September 2025, Rancho Humilde filed a lawsuit against Fuerza Regida, alleging breaches of contract for unilaterally collaborating with artists outside the label — such as Chino Pacas and Drake — and signing exclusive live performance deals with Apple Music and Live Nation.
Fuerza Regida countersued, alleging that Rancho Humilde withheld millions in royalties and attempted to “sabotage” the band’s success, including by neglecting to submit its music for consideration ahead of the 2024 Latin Grammys.
The case is still making its way through the courts.
“Everyone knows [what’s] going on[.] [You see] it [in the] media, [that’s] why I’m going to let justice do its job, everyone is going to know who you really are,” the post by JOP continued in both English and Spanish. “[He who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear], go let [Jimmy Humilde] & [Rancho Humilde] know how you feel, make your voice heard. Our story isn’t over I promise.”
Humilde responded to the artist in the comment section shortly after the post was made public.
“You asked me for a bigger [deal], I got it done. You asked me for your [masters], I fought to make it happen. You wanted to become one of the biggest artists in the [world], I have everything I had to help build that dream,” wrote Humilde.
“When you needed help, I didn’t just bring business. I brought my lawyers, my doctors, my relationships, my time, and my heart. I stood by you when it mattered the most,” Humilde continued. “You walked away with the biggest check of your [life,] over $50 million. I never complained. I was happy to see you win because your success was our success.”
“What hurts is seeing everything we’ve built together reduced to a public narrative that doesn’t tell the whole story. If you believe people deserve the truth, then honor the agreement we made. Complete the contract the same way I honored every commitment I made to you. I never stopped looking out for you. I only ask that you do the same. [He who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear].”
In a separate comment — which Humilde uploaded to his own Instagram account with Fuerza Regida’s own song “El Dinero Los Cambio” (which describes how money can change someone) — the label head pushed back on allegations of robbery: “I robbed you? Robbed you of what, fool. You didn’t even have a dollar for me to rob.”
The music mogul also accused JOP — who founded his own label Street Mob Records in 2018 — of sabotaging his own bandmates. “Let’s talk about [how] your own band members went from partners to being employees. They didn’t have much of a choice.”
“And let’s not forget I helped you land a $15 million deal for your label. After that, how you choose to take care of your artists is on you. [Let’s] ask Chinito [Pacas], Calle [24] and Armenta!!” added Humilde, including the names of artists signed to Street Mob Records.
JOP of Fuerza Regida performs at South By Southwest on March 13 in Austin, Texas.
(Cat Cardenas / For De Los)
In an email to De Los, Humilde’s lawyer, Mike Trauben, pushed back on claims that Rancho Humilde is trying to stop Fuerza Regida from making music and obtaining other opportunities.
They cite two recent deals that were approved by Rancho Humilde, including Fuerza Regida’s appearance on “Grand Theft Auto” and in the online video game “Fortnite,” which aligns with the contractual framework both parties had negotiated.
With regards to the proposed MLB and FIFA collaborations, Humilde’s council said that Fuerza Regida sought to prevent Rancho Humilde from exercising its claimed contractual rights, which was ultimately denied by a federal court.
The reason certain songs were removed from streaming platforms is because Fuerza Regida chose to release music outside the agreed Rancho/Sony distribution structure and without the approvals required under the parties’ agreements, per Humilde’s lawyers.
“Ultimately, this case is not about stopping an artist from succeeding,” wrote Trauben to The Times. “It is about whether sophisticated parties are required to honor the agreements they voluntarily negotiated after success had already arrived.”
According to Trauben, Rancho Humilde and Fuerza Regida, both parties entered a completely new agreement in 2022 that fundamentally restructured their entire business relationship, fully terminating the initial 2018 contract in place. As a result, Fuerza Regida received a flat million-dollar bonus, Rancho Humilde converted its ownership of existing masters into a 50/50 structure and the two entered into a new agreement, which Humilde’s lawyers claim favors Fuerza Regida.
“This case is not about whether artists should have rights. They absolutely should. Nor is it about preventing Fuerza Regida from making music,” wrote Trauben. “Rather, this case asks a much broader question that affects the entire music industry: Do contracts still matter after artist success arrives?”
The Times reached out to Fuerza Regida’s attorney but did not hear back as of this publication.
NEW YORK (OSV News) – At what is meant to be a poignant moment in the DC Comics adaptation “Supergirl” (Warner Bros.), the title character, played by Milly Alcock, is told by her mother (Emily Beecham) that she doesn’t have to be nice but she must be good. The recipient of this advice takes it to heart in a way that lends the whole film an unpleasant tone.
We’re not talking Deadpool depths of obscene snark here. Yet scrappy Supergirl, aka Kara Zor-El, in contrast to her affable cousin — and fellow Kryptonian — Superman (David Corenswet), does not come across as especially likeable.
Nor is she a figure to be imitated since, before she embarks on the quest to which most of the running time is devoted, early scenes show her waking up with a succession of staggering hangovers. She gets blotto, we later learn, in an effort to blot out her troubled past. The only positive ingredient in her current life is the bond she shares with her beloved dog, Krypto.
So when evil alien Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) wounds Krypto with a poisoned dart, leaving him with only hours to live, Supergirl is desperate to help the pup survive. Learning that Krem carries the antidote with him wherever he goes, she sets off on an interplanetary hunt for the villain, racing against time.
Supergirl has already crossed paths with another of Krem’s victims, Ruthye (Eve Ridley). Having watched as Krem slaughtered her entire family, Ruthye is out for revenge and wants to join forces with Supergirl.
Since Ruthye, though courageous, is undersized and completely untrained for combat, Supergirl initially tries to ditch her. But Ruthye is not to be so easily rebuffed.
The unlikely duo eventually acquire an informal ally in the person of cigar-chomping, motorcycle-riding freelance warrior Lobo (Jason Momoa). Lobo has reasons of his own for hating the band of brigands Krem leads.
As scripted by Ana Nogueira, director Craig Gillespie’s scifi adventure includes more than one exchange in which Supergirl warns Ruthye about the morally corrupting effects of exacting vengeance. Yet this thoroughly respectable ethical message is completely undermined as the action reaches its climax.
“Supergirl” may not be a dose of Kryptonite. But it’s no energy-infusing sunbath either.
The film contains much harsh but bloodless violence, a scene of urination, a passing reference to nonscriptural religious ideas, a couple of mild oaths, several uses each of crude and crass language and an obscene gesture. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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