Contrarian social critic Christopher Hitchens, rocker Patti Smith and novelist Jonathan Franzen are among the finalists for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, it was announced Tuesday. The 31st annual prizes will be awarded at a ceremony at The Times on April 29.

There are five finalists competing in 10 categories — current interest, fiction, first fiction, biography, history, mystery-thriller, science and technology, graphic novel, poetry and young adult literature.

The Robert Kirsch Award, for significant contribution to American letters, will be presented to Beverly Cleary, the first time it has been awarded to a children's book author. Cleary is the author of "Beezus and Ramona" and dozens of other books.

Books about presidents have been named finalists in three categories: "Washington: A Life" by Ron Chernow is a finalist in history, Edmund Morris' "Colonel Roosevelt" is a biography finalist and Jonathan Alter's "The Promise: President Obama, Year One" is a finalist in current interest.

Current interest, the category in which the National Book Award-winning memoir by Smith is nominated, also includes two books about the financial crisis: "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis and "All the Devils Are Here" by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean. Sebastian Junger's "War" rounds out the category.

Finalists competing against Franzen in fiction are the novels “Nashville Chrome” by Rick Bass, Frederick Reiken's “Day for Night,” Jennifer Egan's “A Visit From the Goon Squad” and Richard Bausch's story collection “Something Is Out There.”

In biography, Hitchens' skepticism will do battle with Laura Hillenbrand's “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption,” about Southern California Olympian and former prisoner of war Louis Zamperini. Other finalists, along with “Colonel Roosevelt” are “George, Nicholas and Wilhelm” by Miranda Carter and “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham” by Selina Hastings.

In the science and technology category, medicine takes a key role with Rebecca Skloot's “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” by Siddhartha Mukherjee facing off against Oren Harman's “The Price of Altruism,” “Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie” by Lauren Redniss and “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

Veteran mystery-thriller finalist Tana French will go up against Stuart Neville, who won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the category in 2009. Their competitors are Laura Lippman, Kelli Stanley and Tom Franklin.

Now in its second year, the graphic-novel category includes veteran Jim Woodring, graphic memoirists Karl Stevens and C. Tyler, newcomer Adam Hines and Dash Shaw.

Poetry finalists include a Pulitzer Prize winner, Maxine Kumin, and a poet with his first collection, Yehoshua November.

The L.A. Times Book Prizes are awarded the night before the weekend's Festival of Books, which will take place in 2011 at its new home, the campus of USC. The complete list of finalists is after the jump.