The Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction

Judges: Rani Woods, Bernadette Murphy, David Ulin

Kids are smart. They know the score — because, whatever age they are, they’re human beings. Josie Scanlan’s ‘Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation’ gets this at the core. It is an essay that pulls no punches — about childhood, about the relationship of kids and adults, about the way life inevitably lets us down. Scanlan knows what’s going on, the way some things are not redeemable, which means that even at an early age we are all touched by loss. A lovely essay, deft and subtle, but also marked by the complexity of everything, by the experiences that mark us as human beings.

Los Angeles Times Book Critic and Summer/Fall 2013 Special Guest Judge, David Ulin