“Zócalo is the best thing to happen to Los Angeles intellectual life in decades. I can’t imagine a better organization to honor today’s best thinking on the nature of community.”
—Author and Book Prize Judge Greg Critser

The Zócalo Public Square Book Prize will be awarded annually to the U.S.-published book that most enhances our understanding of community — the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion — be it locally, regionally, nationally or globally.

Consistent with our organizational mission — as well as with the form and content of our web magazine and events — the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize seeks to draw attention to — and honor — the best contemporary thinking on the oldest of human dilemmas: how best to live and work together.

Because community is such a vast subject that can be explored in myriad ways, we accept submissions on a broad array of topics and themes and from just as many fields and disciplines.

But like everything else we feature, we will most be on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence and accessibility.

Four finalists will be announced in January 2011. The author of the winning book for 2010, as determined by a panel of judges, will receive $5,000 and deliver a lecture at the Award Ceremony in February 2011.

2010 Judges:

Greg Critser, Author, Eternity Soup, Generation Rx, and Fatland
William Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
Jennifer Ferro, General Manager, KCRW
Kimberly Freeman, Director of Community Relations, Southern California Gas Company
Laurie Ochoa, Co-Editor, Slake
Josephine Ramirez, Program Director for the Arts, The James Irvine Foundation
Gregory Rodriguez, Founder and Executive Director, Zócalo Public Square
Michael Tolkin, Novelist and Filmmaker