Booksellers from across Southern California gathered at the Farm at Fairplex in Pomona, Calif., last Friday evening to enjoy food and refreshments at the opening night reception of the Southern California Independent Bookseller Association's annual trade show. The two-day event featured education sessions that focused on hosting off-site and large events, building genre sections and getting the most out of biographies and memoirs, and on Saturday afternoon SCIBA unveiled its 2017 Book Award winners.
The Glenn Goldman Award for Art, Architecture, and Photography went to Spectacular Illumination: Neon Los Angeles, 1925-1965 (Angel City Press) by Tom Zimmerman and J. Eric Lynxwiler. Brit Bennett won the adult fiction award for her novel The Mothers (Riverhead), Sherri L. Smith received the young adult prize for Pasadena (Putnam), Holly Goldberg Sloan took home the middle grade award for Short (Dial), and the picture book award went to Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus and illustrator Kadir Nelson (Dial). The nonfiction award went to Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath (Dey Street), and Don Winslow received the T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award for The Force (Morrow).