Clip from a Los Angeles Times Book Prize award ceremony (video by Steven Barnes) presenting the 2023 science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction finalists and announcing the winner. The Reformatory by Tana Marie Dew is named the 2023 Los Angeles Book Prize winner in this category. In her acceptance remarks Dew explains the novel was inspired by her family history—the 1937 death of her great-uncle at a Florida reformatory—thanks her husband Stephen Barnes, editor Joe Monti, agent Donald Maass (note: source says Donald Moss), father John Dorsey Duke Jr., and others, and notes the book took seven years to write while reflecting on themes of racial injustice and activism.
Questions this video answers
The Reformatory by Tana Marie Dew
Tana Marie Dew
1937
Seven years
Stephen Barnes
Chapters
What does the future hold? How far can your imagination take you? Science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction authors tackle all of these frontiers. They tap into our darkest fears, elevate our hopes and dreams about future possibilities, and transport us to fantastical worlds beyond our reality. This is a captivating category and these finalists have truly elevated and advanced the genre. The finalists for the 2023 book prizes in science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction are the Reformatory by Tana Marie Du. In her first novel, Nearly a Decade, Dew draws on real life, inspiration and her own loss in the story set against the backdrop of Jim Crow era Florida, about a young boy experiencing racial injustice at a segregated reform school that may be haunted at times, riveting and terrifying, Duke manages to craft a horror novel where the scares are less supernatural and more systemic. Jonah has nothing on Jay, the main character of Daniel Krause's Whale Fall, whose accident is swallowed by a sperm while in a must escape before his oxygen tank runs out of the air. Yes, the book is widely entertaining and fast paced, but what really elevates the story here is the redemptive father son story at the center, the true beating heart in this whale of tale. No one has as much fun playing this genre as Victor Laval and with Lone Woman. With Lone Women, the author expertly melds the Western and horror genres together in this unpredictable story of a woman searching for a designated community on the American frontier. The book also manages to redefine that age old question what's in the damn box? The Fragile Friends of Power by De Schwab. Schwab once again demonstrates why she is in a class of her own when it comes to epic world building and mythology. With the fragile threads of Power, Schwab Dispenser shades a magic universe and creates a sublime tapestry of both familiar and new settings where a magical young girl, a world weary king and a bloodthirsty queen All Clyde Jewel stories by E. Lily Yu. A street Lamp describes its unrequited love for a human man. A peddler sells a tonic effect of new eyes. A sociopolitical battle breaks out between wasps and bees. This is only a glimpse of the short stories in Hughes collection where she tackles everything from the prison industrial complex to the afterlife with her signature wit and determination to understand the fundamental truths of humanity and the 2023 Los Angeles book Prize in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Secular Fiction goes to. The Reformatory.
I am breakfast right now. I'm so glad I wrote some remarks. Thank you so much to the LA Times Book Price Committee. I know that's such a tough job. The other nominees are incredible. To say that this is an honor is an understatement. Back in 2013, I got a phone call from the Florida state attorney's office and learned that my great uncle, Robert Stevens died in 1937 at a notorious military school for boys, a reformatory in Florida. And after attending a meeting there with my father, freedom lawyer John Dorsey Duke Jr. I knew I had to write about Robert Stevens. But I also knew that my story would gain a different ending. And ghosts, the novel took me seven years to write. Thank you so much to my husband, Stephen Barnes. I love you so much. Also, a great way for keeping me on the path. My editor, Joe Monti at Saga Press, my agent Donald Moss, my father for helping me imagine a Jim Crow and judges chamber. My sister's judging, Olivia and my late mother Patricia Glory. I see these due for courage as a civil rights activist. If I didn't know what should happen next in my book, I just had to ask, what would mom have done? There are countless Robert and Gloria Stevens in the world and too few of them get a happy ending. So as we face the horrors in our lives in our cities in Gaza and elsewhere, and witness true life, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, let us honor the courage of young people as the primary creators of change throughout history. And the lesson my mother taught me, activism takes many, many forms. As the late Octavia E. Butler said, the only lasting truth, change. Thank you very much.
