The Los Angeles Times has announced the shortlists for its annual book prizes, and the finalists in the Graphic Novel category are
- Heaven No Hell, by Michael DeForge (Drawn & Quarterly)
- The Waiting, by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, translated by Janet Hong (Drawn & Quarterly)
- Shadow Life, by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu (First Second)
- No One Else, by R. Kikuo Johnson (Fantagraphics)
- Stone Fruit, by Lee Lai (Fantagraphics)
All these titles will likely be familiar to Smash Pages readers. Stone Fruit won two Ignatz Awards last year, as did DeForge’s Birds of Maine, and Gendry-Kim’s earlier graphic novel, Grass, made the 2020 LA Times shortlist, as did DeForge’s Leaving Richard’s Valley.
The judges for the Graphic Novel section were Sloane Leong, Joel Christian Gill, and Cathy G. Johnson.