“Binc’s important mission to help stores weather natural disasters and economic hardship was never more important than during the catastrophic year of 2020 when physical retail businesses suffered so much due to the pandemic.

“This year, it was an easy call when it came to selecting the Innovator’s Award winner,” said Julia Turner, Deputy Managing Editor for Arts and Entertainment. The award, which spotlights efforts to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, will honor Binc for its contributions and work assisting struggling independent bookstores and employees in a year when many small businesses were forced to shut their doors. The 2020 Innovator’s Award will be presented to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). Some of her most acclaimed works include “Laguna,” “Ceremony,” Storyteller” and “Almanac of the Dead.” Silko has received high honors throughout her writing career, including a Pushcart Prize for Poetry and the MacArthur “genius” grant, and was named a Living Cultural Treasure by the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Since the early 1970s, Silko has published several novels, essays and collections of poetry. Her works draw on the myths and traditions of her Laguna heritage to powerfully illuminate the lives of her characters they have also expanded the canon of America’s literature to include its original cultures and ways of seeing the world.” “Her contributions to the renaissance of Native American literature and art paved the way for subsequent generations of Native American writers. “We are so pleased to recognize Leslie’s remarkable writing career, spanning more than four decades, with this year’s Kirsch Award,” said Times Book Editor Boris Kachka. She writes about the alienation of Native Americans and the importance of Native traditions to help cope with modern-day reservation life.

Silko’s work is heavily influenced by her mixed heritage of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and Anglo-American.

Traditionally the nation’s largest in-person literary event, the festival will continue this year as an online community gathering, beginning on Saturday, April 17, and continuing over the course of six days.Īcclaimed novelist and poet Leslie Marmon Silko will receive the 2020 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, which recognizes a writer whose work focuses on the American West. Winners will be announced virtually on Friday, April 16, 2021, in a prologue to the Festival of Books, Stories and Ideas. The literary awards champion new voices and celebrate the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers. Leslie Marmon Silko will be honored with the Robert Kirsch Award, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation will receive the Innovator’s Award and Andrew O’Hagan will be presented with the Christopher Isherwood Prize. The Los Angeles Times today announced the finalists and honorees of the 41st annual Book Prizes.

Marmon silko