Kay Boyle, 5 Others Win Book Awards

Kay Boyle, an 84-year-old former expatriate with a rebellious nature, was one of six authors honored Friday evening with 1986 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes as she was presented the Robert Kirsch Award for a body of work by a writer living or writing in the West.

During a career spanning more than half a century, Boyle has published more than 30 books, including novels, poetry, criticism, reportage and memoirs.

The fiction prize went to Margaret Atwood for “A Handmaid’s Tale,” a novel about America in the near future when constitutional rights have been suspended by right-wing religious fundamentalists and women are “protected,” not allowed to hold jobs or be educated. It was published by Houghton Mifflin.

The poetry award was given to Derek Walcott, a Boston University teacher, for his “Collected Poems 1948-1984,” published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Yale University professor Maynard Mack won the prize for biography for “Alexander Pope: A Life,” published by Norton.

Geoffrey Hosking won the history award for “The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union From Within,” published by Harvard University Press. The book examines the impact of the 1917 Russian revolution on the people and examines the totalitarian methods by which Soviet leaders reconcile contradictions between Marxism and Leninism.

Former New York Times South Africa correspondent Joseph Lelyveld was given the current interest category prize for “Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White,” published by Times Books.

Kirsch Award winner Boyle, who now lives in Oakland, lived and worked in Paris during the 1920s. She wrote poetry, short stories and novels throughout Europe until the outbreak of World War II, and returned to Germany after the war, where she wrote of the moral dilemmas facing its people.

She and her husband, Austrian-born Joseph Franckenstein, a U.S. government employee, were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Her husband died in 1963. She began teaching at San Francisco State University, supported the black students’ protest there and later joined the protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

“The older I grow,” she recently told a Times interviewer, “the more I feel that all writers should be more committed to their times and write of their times and of the issues of their times and also fight for them, take action on them.”

There were six nominees for each prize. The Times gave each winner $1,000 and a copy of his or her book bound in leather.

The awards were presented during a reception hosted by Tom Johnson, publisher and chief executive officer of The Times, and William F. Thomas, editor and executive vice president.