Bishakh Som's APSARA ENGINE wins L.A. Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel!
On April 16, the 41st annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were awarded in a livestreamed virtual ceremony. Hosted by Times Book Editor Boris Kachka, the literary awards recognized 56 remarkable works in 12 categories, championing new voices and celebrating the highest quality of writing.
Bishakh Som’s APSARA ENGINE won Best Graphic Novel/Comic. “I started APSARA ENGINE at a time of uncertainty and risk in my life... It's a marker of transness and of a time of transitioning and of change. I'm so happy that it has resonated with folks,” shared Som during her acceptance speech.
You can purchase her book wherever books are sold, including Brookline Booksmith.
Congratulations to Bishakh Som all the finalists!
About the book:
"Som's imagination is science-fictiony, without being particularly technological, mythic without being particularly traditional, and humanistic without cherishing any particular assumptions about where we, as a species, are headed. . . . Evading standard categories and unsettling familiar narrative patterns, the book is a testament to how trans experiences can teach us entirely new ways of imagining our humanity." —NPR.org
The eight delightfully eerie stories in Apsara Engine are a subtle intervention into everyday reality: a woman drowns herself in a past affair, a tourist chases another guest into an unforeseen past, and a nonbinary academic researches postcolonial cartography. Imagining diverse futures and rewriting old mythologies, these comics delve into strange architectures, fetishism, and heartbreak.
Painted in rich sepia-toned watercolors, Apsara Engine is Bishakh Som's highly anticipated debut work of fiction. Showcasing a series of fraught, darkly humorous, and seemingly alien worlds—which ring all too familiar—Som captures the weight of twenty-first-century life as we hurl ourselves forward into the unknown.
About the author:
Bishakh Som is an artist, illustrator, and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, BuzzFeed, the Boston Review, and the Brooklyn Rail, among others. Her books include Apsara Engine, Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir, and The Prefab Bathroom: An Architectural History, and she was also a contributor to We're Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. Som is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.