Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, established in 1991, is a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize awarded to authors' debut books of fiction. It is named for the Los Angeles Times' critic Art Seidenbaum who was also an author and editor.^[1] Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though they may be written originally in languages other than English.

Recipients

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction winners and finalists

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1991	David Wong Louie	Pangs of Love	Winner	[2]
1992	Darryl Pinckney	High Cotton	Winner	[3]
1993	Paul Kafka	Love	Winner	[4]
1994	Martin M. Šimecka	The Year of the Frog	Winner	[5]
1995	Mark Merlis	American Studies	Winner	[6]
1996	Mark Behr	The Smell of Apples	Winner	[7]
1997	Carolyn Ferrell	Don't Erase Me: Stories	Winner	[8]
1998	C. S. Godshalk	Kalimantaan	Winner	[9]
1999	Elizabeth Strout	Amy and Isabelle	Winner	[9]
	Galaxy Craze	By the Shore	Finalist
	Nathan Englander	For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
2000	Pankaj Mishra	The Romantics	Winner	[9]
2001	Rachel Seiffert	The Dark Room	Winner	[9]
	Manil Suri	The Death of Vishnu	Finalist	[10]
2002	Arthur Phillips	Prague	Winner	[9]
2003	Mark Haddon	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Winner	[11]
2004	Lorraine Adams	Harbor	Winner	[12]
	Peter Duval	Rear View	Finalist	[12]
2005	Uzodinma Iweala	Beasts of No Nation	Winner	[13]
	Kirstin Allio	Garner	Finalist	[14]
2006	Alice Greenway	White Ghost Girls	Winner	[15][16]
	Jennifer Gilmore	Golden Country	Finalist	[17]
	Lisa Fugard	Skinner’s Drift
2007	Dinaw Mengestu	The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears	Winner	[18]
	Ellen Litman	The Last Chicken in America	Finalist	[18]
	Rebecca Curtis	Twenty Grand: and Other Tales of Love and Money
2008	Zoë Ferraris	Finding Nouf	Winner	[19][20]
	Roma Tearne	Mosquito	Finalist	[21]
	David Wroblewski	The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
2009	Philipp Meyer	American Rust	Winner	[22]
	Daniyal Mueenuddin	In Other Rooms, Other Wonders	Finalist	[23]
	Paul Harding	Tinkers
2010	Peter Bognanni	The House of Tomorrow	Winner	[24]
	Christine Sneed	Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry	Finalist	[25]
	Michael Sledge	The More I Owe You
2011	Ismet Prcic	Shards	Winner	[26]
	Ben Lerner	Leaving the Atocha Station	Finalist	[27]
	Eleanor Henderson	Ten Thousand Saints
	James Wallenstein	The Arriviste
2012	Maggie Shipstead	Seating Arrangements	Winner	[28][29]
	David Abrams	Fobbit	Finalist	[30]
2013	NoViolet Bulawayo	We Need New Names	Winner	[28][29]
	Jamie Quatro	I Want To Show You More	Finalist	[31]
	Jeff Jackson	Mira Corpora
	Fiona McFarlane	The Night Guest
	Ethan Rutherford	The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories
2014	Valeria Luiselli with Christina MacSweeney (trans.)	Faces in the Crowd	Winner	[32][33]
	Eimear McBride	A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing	Finalist	[34]
	Valeria Luiselli	Faces in the Crowd
	Diane Cook	Man V. Nature: Stories
	David James Poissant	The Heaven of Animals: Stories
	John Darnielle	Wolf in White Van		[34][35]
2015	Chigozie Obioma	The Fishermen	Winner	[36]
2016	Nathan Hill	The Nix	Winner	[37]
2017	Jenny Zhang	Sour Heart	Winner	[38]
	Rachel Khong	Goodbye, Vitamin	Finalist	[39][40]
	Carmen Maria Machado	Her Body and Other Parties
	Gabriel Tallent	My Absolute Darling		[40]
	Elif Batuman	The Idiot
2018	Nafissa Thompson-Spires	Heads of the Colored People	Winner	[41]
	Lisa Halliday	Asymmetry	Finalist	[42]
	Katya Apekina	The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
	R. O. Kwon	The Incendiaries
	Tommy Orange	There There
2019	Namwali Serpell	The Old Drift	Winner	[43][44]
	De’Shawn Charles Winslow	In West Mills	Finalist	[45]
	Sarah Elaine Smith	Marilou Is Everywhere
	Maria Gainza	Optic Nerve
	Lila Savage	Say Say Say
2020	Deesha Philyaw	The Secret Lives of Church Ladies	Winner	[46][47]
	Shruti Swamy	A House is a Body: Stories	Finalist	[48]
	Meng Jin	Little Gods
	Douglas Stuart	Shuggie Bain
	Maisy Card	These Ghosts Are Family
2021	Jackie Polzin	Brood	Winner	[49]
	Natasha Brown	Assembly	Finalist	[50]
	Thomas Grattan	The Recent East
	Jocelyn Nicole Johnson	My Monticello: Fiction
	Benjamín Labatut with Adrian Nathan West (trans.)	When We Cease to Understand the World
2022	Aamina Ahmad	The Return of Faraz Ali: a novel	Winner	[51]
	Maayan Eitan	Love	Finalist	[52]
	Sidik Fofana	Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
	Oscar Hokeah	Calling for a Blanket Dance
	Morgan Thomas	Manywhere: Stories
2023	Shannon Sanders	Company: Stories	Winner	[53]
	Stephen Buoro	The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: A Novel	Finalist	[54]
	Sheena Patel	I'm a Fan: A Novel
	James Frankie Thomas	Idlewild: A Novel
	Ghassan Zeineddine	Dearborn
2024	Jiaming Tang	Cinema Love	Winner	[55]
	Pemi Aguda	Ghostroots: Stories	Finalist
	Joseph Earl Thomas	God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
	Jessica Elisheva Emerson	Olive Days
	Julian Zabalbeascoa	What We Tried to Bury Grows Here