1sycoraxpine
For the discussion of the National Book Critics Circle Award, including the prizes for Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry and Criticism.
2sycoraxpine
I am currently reading Voices from Chernobyl, which won the General Nonfiction Award this year, and it is indeed extraordinary. It is a series of first-hand accounts of regular people's experiences with the nuclear disaster, almost entirely unmediated by any interventions from the author/interviewer. Thus instead of getting a single authoritative take on the event, filled with scientific and historical arguments, instead you get a sort of triangulation of what happened, a negotiation of facts between many many voices. It is fascinating, deeply moving, and terrifying.
Fascinating that it would be chosen the same year that American Prometheus wins the Biography prize. Has anyone read this or any of the other winners?
Fascinating that it would be chosen the same year that American Prometheus wins the Biography prize. Has anyone read this or any of the other winners?
3bookishbunny
Two months later....
I'm reading A Thounsand Acres by Jane Smiley. It's a rather quick read, and I like it, but I'm not getting that waves-breaking-over-my-head feeling I've gotten from other books.
I'm reading A Thounsand Acres by Jane Smiley. It's a rather quick read, and I like it, but I'm not getting that waves-breaking-over-my-head feeling I've gotten from other books.
4amandameale
I found A Thousand Acres very satisfying.
5bookishbunny
Now that I've finished it...
A Thousand Acres was good, and I would recommend it to other readers, but I wasn't 'transported' by it. I wonder what made it so remarkable compared to other books published that year. Are there books on the short lists that any of you would also recommend?
A Thousand Acres was good, and I would recommend it to other readers, but I wasn't 'transported' by it. I wonder what made it so remarkable compared to other books published that year. Are there books on the short lists that any of you would also recommend?
6avaland
Bookishbunny, I'd have to agree with you on A Thousand Acres. My favorite NBCC award novels are: The Known World, Motherless Brooklyn, and Atonement. I really didn't care for Gilead and never finished it.
7amandameale
After reading about twenty pages of Gilead I realised that I was reading a sort of meditation on this man's life, the idea of which I found very boring. I nearly gave up but pressed on and at some point the book lulled me into it's easy, comfortable drift. It was an unusual reading experience but ultimately one I enjoyed.
8bookishbunny
Thanks for that comment, amandameale. When I get to this book, I'll remember that.
10kjphenix
Well now, I loved A Thousand acres and Atonement, but didn't even bother to finish The Known World and Gilead. I have yet to find my book soul mate.
11avaland
Finalists will be announced the end of this month. Please, whoever sees them first, would you cut and paste them on this thread? It's much easier to talk about them when we can easily refer to the list.
12rebeccanyc
The list has been announced.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The lay of the Land by Richard Ford
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
Edited to say this is the fiction list, published in the NY Times. Will check the web site later for other categories, unless someone beats me to it.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The lay of the Land by Richard Ford
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
Edited to say this is the fiction list, published in the NY Times. Will check the web site later for other categories, unless someone beats me to it.
13LouisBranning
Both The Road and What is the What were on my 'favorite books of 2006' list and are just wonderful novels. The Lay of the Land didn't work for me at any level and I was rather bored with it finally. I'm not in the least interested in Kiran Desai's book either, so I definitely won't be reading that one, but I've got a copy of Half of a Yellow Sun I'll be getting to before too long.
14avaland
From their website...(I left out "criticism" and "fiction" posted above).
Nonfiction
Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq
Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East
Memoir/Autobiography
Donald Antrim, The Afterlife
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Teri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise
Poetry
Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again.
Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory.
Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971)
Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga
W.D. Snodrass, Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems
Biography
Debby Applegate: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968
Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography
Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
Jason Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
Touchstones a bit overwhelmed, I think. Having a lot of trouble with some of the poetry...
Nonfiction
Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq
Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East
Memoir/Autobiography
Donald Antrim, The Afterlife
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Teri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise
Poetry
Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again.
Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory.
Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971)
Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga
W.D. Snodrass, Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems
Biography
Debby Applegate: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968
Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography
Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
Jason Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
Touchstones a bit overwhelmed, I think. Having a lot of trouble with some of the poetry...
15rebeccanyc
Of course, I was happy to see Half of A Yellow Sun on the list, since I've been touting it as one of my favorite books of 2006 and, indeed, of many years. Neither Cormac McCarthy or Dave Eggers have appealed to me in the past, but I've been thinking of reading their current books, the Eggers because Francine Prose gave it such a good review in the Times Book Review. Never read Richard Ford's The Sportswriter, and sort of felt I should before trying The Lay of the Land, but haven't been really motivated, and The Inheritance of Loss did very little for me -- liked some parts, didn't like it overall.
16kjphenix
I am reading Lay of the Land now. I'm getting all the backstory I need from this 3rd of the series and I have no interest in going back and reading them. I have such mixed feelings about this author! His writing is just amazingly evocative, really brilliant, and I chuckle often, but his writing is so MALE...I don't like this Paul Bascombe fellow much at all. The book appears to be taking place all in one day and there is absolutely no action. I can't believe it has been placed on so many winning lists. Book critics must mostly live in New Jersey!
17LouisBranning
The Lay of the Land didn't work at all for me either, kjphenix, and I've never liked Bascombe in Ford's other books, didn't here either.
18avaland
Winners will be announced March 8th, 6 p.m. EST at the ceremony. Not sure how long it will take to make it online.
19avaland
2006 Fiction winner is The Inheritance of Loss. More coming...
20avaland
This year's NBCC Award for Autobiography goes to The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn
This year's NBCC Award for General Nonfiction goes to Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, by Simon Schama
This year's NBCC Award for Biography goes to James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips
This year's NBCC Award for Poetry goes to Tom Thompson in Purgatory, by Troy Jollimore
pasted in from the NBCCA blog...
This year's NBCC Award for General Nonfiction goes to Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, by Simon Schama
This year's NBCC Award for Biography goes to James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips
This year's NBCC Award for Poetry goes to Tom Thompson in Purgatory, by Troy Jollimore
pasted in from the NBCCA blog...
21avaland
I have to say that I am absolutely thrilled for Julie Phillips! It took her ten years to write this book. The Alice Sheldon biography is just such a great and unusual choice.
I would've chosen the Adichie over the Desai, personally. I do like their writeup of the Desai though...each time I read something like this, my reading of the book is enhanced.
I would've chosen the Adichie over the Desai, personally. I do like their writeup of the Desai though...each time I read something like this, my reading of the book is enhanced.
22LouisBranning
I've never been interested in reading the Desai, still not curious about it all, but am also thrilled for Julie Phillips. The story of Alice Sheldon is really an amazing one, and her book was easily one of the best of last year.
23rebeccanyc
Well, it just goes to show there's no accounting for taste. I found The Inheritance of Loss extremely disappointing and, as people here know, think Half of a Yellow Sun is one of the best new books I've read in years.
24avaland
Well, rebeccanyc, we can still hope that Adichie will be recognized by the other awards...
While I enjoyed Inheritance, I still found it oddly put together in a way that diminishes its message. No doubt, I missed something along the way (which is why I like to read reviews and criticism of it).
While I enjoyed Inheritance, I still found it oddly put together in a way that diminishes its message. No doubt, I missed something along the way (which is why I like to read reviews and criticism of it).
25writestuff
I think I'm one of the few people who actually really liked Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. I found her writing simply beautiful; and some of the confusion I felt initially stemmed from some of my ignorance of Indian culture and caste systems and history - that said, I believe the book was more about disconnection from one's country and culture which could be applied universally.
I also read Adichie's beautiful book. I would give Half of a Yellow Sun the edge over The Inheritance of Loss - but then I think Adichie is one of the most talented writers I've encountered!
I also read Adichie's beautiful book. I would give Half of a Yellow Sun the edge over The Inheritance of Loss - but then I think Adichie is one of the most talented writers I've encountered!
26avaland
January 12th, in the evening (West coast time) will be the announcement of the 2007 nominees. Seems results should be posted by morning - one hopes.
27avaland
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominees 2008
Fiction
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games, HarperCollins
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Riverhead
Hisham Matar, In The Country of Men. Dial Press
Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravediggers Daughter
Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher
Nonfiction
Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism, Farrar, Straus
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848, Oxford University Press
Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, Doubleday
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s
Autobiography
Joshua Clark, Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone, Free Press
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying, Knopf signed firsts, $45
Joyce Carol Oates, The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982, Ecco
Sara Paretsky, Writing in an Age of Silence, Verso
Anna Politkovskaya, Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia, Random House
Biography
Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, Yale University Press
Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton, Knopf
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison. Knopf
John Richardson, The Life Of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, Knopf
Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy, Penguin Press
Poetry
Mary Jo Bang, Elegy, Graywolf
Matthea Harvey, Modern Life, Graywolf
Michael O'Brien, Sleeping and Waking, Flood
Tom Pickard, The Ballad of Jamie Allan, Flood
Tadeusz Rozewicz, New Poems, Archipelago
Criticism
Joan Acocella, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, Pantheon
Julia Alvarez, Once Upon a Quniceanera, Viking
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream, Metropolitan/Holt
Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fiction
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games, HarperCollins
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Riverhead
Hisham Matar, In The Country of Men. Dial Press
Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravediggers Daughter
Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher
Nonfiction
Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism, Farrar, Straus
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848, Oxford University Press
Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, Doubleday
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s
Autobiography
Joshua Clark, Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone, Free Press
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying, Knopf signed firsts, $45
Joyce Carol Oates, The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982, Ecco
Sara Paretsky, Writing in an Age of Silence, Verso
Anna Politkovskaya, Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia, Random House
Biography
Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, Yale University Press
Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton, Knopf
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison. Knopf
John Richardson, The Life Of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, Knopf
Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy, Penguin Press
Poetry
Mary Jo Bang, Elegy, Graywolf
Matthea Harvey, Modern Life, Graywolf
Michael O'Brien, Sleeping and Waking, Flood
Tom Pickard, The Ballad of Jamie Allan, Flood
Tadeusz Rozewicz, New Poems, Archipelago
Criticism
Joan Acocella, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, Pantheon
Julia Alvarez, Once Upon a Quniceanera, Viking
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream, Metropolitan/Holt
Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
28rebeccanyc
Thanks for posting the lists, avaland.
I haven't read most of these, but here are comments on the ones I have.
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra Both compelling and infuriating, doesn't completely succeed, but a wonderful attempt.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman Started it but got distracted and haven't finished it. Interesting idea, but I'm not sure I'd consider it award-worthy.
Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky Impassioned, but not in my opinion award-worthy.
My sweetie has read the Ralph Ellison biography by Arnold Rampersad and thought it was very good, and has (because I gave it to him), but hasn't yet read, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff.
I hope to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Brother, I'm Dying, possibly the biographies of Edith Wharton and Thomas Hardy, and The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, but I don't have them yet and have no idea when I'll have time to read them!
I haven't read most of these, but here are comments on the ones I have.
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra Both compelling and infuriating, doesn't completely succeed, but a wonderful attempt.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman Started it but got distracted and haven't finished it. Interesting idea, but I'm not sure I'd consider it award-worthy.
Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky Impassioned, but not in my opinion award-worthy.
My sweetie has read the Ralph Ellison biography by Arnold Rampersad and thought it was very good, and has (because I gave it to him), but hasn't yet read, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff.
I hope to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Brother, I'm Dying, possibly the biographies of Edith Wharton and Thomas Hardy, and The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, but I don't have them yet and have no idea when I'll have time to read them!
29avaland
I have read The Gravedigger's Daughter which was on my personal top ten for 2007. I also have the Matar still in the endless TBR pile and I gave my husband the Diaz for Christmas.
As for nonfiction, I have the Thomas Hardy but haven't read it yet (too much school stuff to read) but have browsed through the Joyce Carol Oates journals enough to be intrigued, and I have read bits of the Faludi book (again, trying not to get distracted from the school reading). It's interesting that Faludi's work is considered "criticism."
As for nonfiction, I have the Thomas Hardy but haven't read it yet (too much school stuff to read) but have browsed through the Joyce Carol Oates journals enough to be intrigued, and I have read bits of the Faludi book (again, trying not to get distracted from the school reading). It's interesting that Faludi's work is considered "criticism."
30Shortride
Winners:
Fiction The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Non-Fiction Medical Apartheid
Biography Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer
Autobiography/Memoir: Brother, I'm Dying
Poetry: Elegy
Criticism: The Rest is Noise
Fiction The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Non-Fiction Medical Apartheid
Biography Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer
Autobiography/Memoir: Brother, I'm Dying
Poetry: Elegy
Criticism: The Rest is Noise
31HelloAnnie
I got The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao from the library, but I really couldn't get into it. Maybe it was bad timing. I'd be willing to give it another try.
32kidzdoc
The 2008 NBCC Awards will be handed out on March 12th. Here are the finalists for each category:
Fiction Finalists
Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Marilynne Robinson, Home
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge
Poetry Finalists
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City
Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light
Devin Johnston, Sources
Pierre Martory, The Landscapist
Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar
Criticism Finalists
Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard
Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life
Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds
Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry
Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter
Biography Finalists
Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family In An American Century
Patrick French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Autobiography Finalists
Rick Bass, Why I Came West
Helene Cooper, The House On Sugar Beach
Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter
Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves Of Heaven
Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
Nonfiction Finalists
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Doubleday
Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation
George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776
Fiction Finalists
Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Marilynne Robinson, Home
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge
Poetry Finalists
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City
Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light
Devin Johnston, Sources
Pierre Martory, The Landscapist
Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar
Criticism Finalists
Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard
Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life
Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds
Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry
Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter
Biography Finalists
Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family In An American Century
Patrick French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Autobiography Finalists
Rick Bass, Why I Came West
Helene Cooper, The House On Sugar Beach
Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter
Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves Of Heaven
Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
Nonfiction Finalists
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Doubleday
Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation
George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776
33kidzdoc
The NBCC Award winners were announced this evening:
Fiction: Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Poetry: August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City and Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light
Criticism: Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter
Biography: Patrick French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
Autobiography: Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
Nonfiction: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
Fiction: Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Poetry: August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City and Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light
Criticism: Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter
Biography: Patrick French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
Autobiography: Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
Nonfiction: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
34avaland
>33 kidzdoc: well, the Bolano was a no-brainer. And all male authors, gee, what century are we in? (sorry, my usual bitch)
35kidzdoc
I was hoping that Helene Cooper's The House at Sugar Beach would have won the autobiography award, after listening to an interview of her on NPR. I haven't read it yet; my mother has my copy.
36lauralkeet
>34 avaland:: I'm with you, avaland. Sheesh.
37Jargoneer
>34 avaland:/36 - it was 50/50 last year and look at the books that won this year - Iraq, Afghanistan, homelessness - it's a result of the new social consciousness.
39avaland
>37 Jargoneer: what? women aren't capable of writing socially conscious literature?
41avaland
>40 Jargoneer: the gender parity of the board usually has no bearing on outcome, imo. Patriarchal tradition can be carried on by women also. Not that even other male authors had much chance against Bolano (although, of all awards, this one fits him nicely. He is the kind of writer the NBCC likes to reward). It will be interesting to see how many other awards Bolano can pull off this year. . .
42rebeccanyc
Well, 2666 IS a great book, and sometimes it helps to be dead, too. I haven't read enough of the nominated books to be able to make an informed decision, but in nonfiction I certainly think The Dark Side: The inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer (which I've read and admired greatly, although it was chilling and Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering (which I'm looking forward to reading) should have been very strong contenders.
43kidzdoc
The finalists for the 2009 NBCC Awards were announced yesterday:
Autobiography:
Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End
Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
Mary Karr, Lit
Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America
Edmund White, City Boy
Biography:
Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life
Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone
Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Criticism:
Eula Biss, Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays
Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry
Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music
Fiction:
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage
Marlon James, The Book of Night Women
Michelle Huneven, Blame
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite
Nonfiction:
Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains
William T. Vollmann, Imperial
Poetry:
Rae Armantrout, Versed
Louise Glück, A Village Life
D.A. Powell, Chronic
Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008
Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents
National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists
Autobiography:
Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End
Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
Mary Karr, Lit
Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America
Edmund White, City Boy
Biography:
Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life
Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone
Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Criticism:
Eula Biss, Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays
Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry
Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music
Fiction:
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage
Marlon James, The Book of Night Women
Michelle Huneven, Blame
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite
Nonfiction:
Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains
William T. Vollmann, Imperial
Poetry:
Rae Armantrout, Versed
Louise Glück, A Village Life
D.A. Powell, Chronic
Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008
Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents
National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists
44kidzdoc
This year's winners are:
Fiction: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Nonfiction: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Biography: Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Autobiography: Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
Criticism: Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss
National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced
Fiction: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Nonfiction: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Biography: Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Autobiography: Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
Criticism: Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss
National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced
45avaland
I'm actually a little surprised that Mantel won the NBCC Award. The Mantel is of course award-worthy - that's not to be argued - it's just that I've also thought the NBCC tended to go for books a bit edgier (maybe that's not the word I want), a little more eclectic (maybe not that word either). Hmmm.
eta: quirkier
eta: quirkier
46kidzdoc
The finalists for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced yesterday:
Fiction
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad
Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
David Grossman, To The End Of The Land
Hans Keilson, Comedy In A Minor Key
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
Biography
Sarah Bakewell, How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne
Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography
Yunte Huang, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History
Thomas Powers, The Killing Of Crazy Horse
Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life And Legends
Autobiography
Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978
David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Darin Strauss, Half a Life
Criticism
Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings
Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance
Ander Monson, Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir
Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Poetry
Anne Carson, Nox
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City: Poems
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
Kay Ryan, The Best of It
C.D. Wright, One with Others: a little book of her days
The winners will be announced on March 10th. More information:
The National Book Critics Circle Finalists for 2010 Awards
Fiction
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad
Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
David Grossman, To The End Of The Land
Hans Keilson, Comedy In A Minor Key
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
Biography
Sarah Bakewell, How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne
Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography
Yunte Huang, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History
Thomas Powers, The Killing Of Crazy Horse
Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life And Legends
Autobiography
Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978
David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Darin Strauss, Half a Life
Criticism
Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings
Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance
Ander Monson, Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir
Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Poetry
Anne Carson, Nox
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City: Poems
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
Kay Ryan, The Best of It
C.D. Wright, One with Others: a little book of her days
The winners will be announced on March 10th. More information:
The National Book Critics Circle Finalists for 2010 Awards
47rebeccanyc
Thanks for posting the list.
For fiction, I've only read A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I certainly think deserves the award as it was one of my favorite books of last year, and Comedy in a Minor Key.
Haven't read any of the biographies or poetry, but I'm currently reading Just Kids by Patti Smith and so far I can say it deserves the autobiography award (without of course having read any of the others). I also loved Nothing to Envy, but haven't read any of the other nonfiction nominees.
For fiction, I've only read A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I certainly think deserves the award as it was one of my favorite books of last year, and Comedy in a Minor Key.
Haven't read any of the biographies or poetry, but I'm currently reading Just Kids by Patti Smith and so far I can say it deserves the autobiography award (without of course having read any of the others). I also loved Nothing to Envy, but haven't read any of the other nonfiction nominees.
48kidzdoc
Fiction: I've read Freedom, which I thought was good but not great, and I'll read Skippy Dies in the near future.
Nonfiction: I loved The Emperor of All Maladies, which was one of my top 10 books of 2010. I'll read Nothing to Envy this spring, and The Warmth of Other Suns next month.
Poetry: I own Lighthead and One With Others, and I'll definitely read both collections soon.
Biography, Autobiography, Criticism: I don't own and haven't read any of the finalists in these categories.
Nonfiction: I loved The Emperor of All Maladies, which was one of my top 10 books of 2010. I'll read Nothing to Envy this spring, and The Warmth of Other Suns next month.
Poetry: I own Lighthead and One With Others, and I'll definitely read both collections soon.
Biography, Autobiography, Criticism: I don't own and haven't read any of the finalists in these categories.
49goddesspt2
I'm planning on winning Lighthead and Warmth Of Other Suns in February. I do want to get Hitchens' Hitch-22
50kidzdoc
The winners of the 2010 NBCC awards were announced earlier this evening:
Fiction: Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad
Biography: Sarah Bakewell, How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne
Autobiography: Darin Strauss, Half a Life
Criticism: Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
Nonfiction: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Poetry: C.D. Wright, One with Others: a little book of her days
More information: 2010 NBCC Award Winners
Fiction: Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad
Biography: Sarah Bakewell, How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne
Autobiography: Darin Strauss, Half a Life
Criticism: Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
Nonfiction: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Poetry: C.D. Wright, One with Others: a little book of her days
More information: 2010 NBCC Award Winners
51amandameale
Thanks Darryl!
52kidzdoc
The finalists for this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night:
Fiction
Teju Cole, Open City (Random House)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Knopf)
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (Lookout Books)
Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (Scribner)
Nonfiction
Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random)
James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon)
Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)
Autobiography
Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing (W.W. Norton)
Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (Free Press)
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown)
Luis J. Rodríguez, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)
Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)
Biography
Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution (Little, Brown)
John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press)
Paul Hendrickson, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf)
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)
Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)
Criticism
David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber)
Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf)
Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday)
Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture (Open Letter)
Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)
Poetry
Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)
Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)
Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)
Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago Press)
The winners will be announced on March 8. More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/press-release-draft
Fiction
Teju Cole, Open City (Random House)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Knopf)
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (Lookout Books)
Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (Scribner)
Nonfiction
Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random)
James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon)
Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)
Autobiography
Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing (W.W. Norton)
Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (Free Press)
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown)
Luis J. Rodríguez, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)
Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)
Biography
Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution (Little, Brown)
John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press)
Paul Hendrickson, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf)
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)
Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)
Criticism
David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber)
Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf)
Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday)
Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture (Open Letter)
Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)
Poetry
Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)
Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)
Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)
Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago Press)
The winners will be announced on March 8. More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/press-release-draft
53Donna828
Thanks for the update, Darryl. The only fiction nominee I've read (so far) is The Marriage Plot. I ended up liking it much better than I thought I would, though I doubt I'll consider it one of my best books of the year. I hope not anyway as I rated it 3.8 stars. ;-)
54kidzdoc
The winners of this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards are:
Fiction: Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
Nonfiction: Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
Autobiography: Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace
Biography: John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life
Criticism: Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
Poetry: Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains
More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/for-immediate-release-nbcc-award-winners-for...
Fiction: Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
Nonfiction: Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
Autobiography: Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace
Biography: John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life
Criticism: Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
Poetry: Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains
More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/for-immediate-release-nbcc-award-winners-for...
55rebeccanyc
I recently bought the Pearlman, and it's outstanding so far.
56TooBusyReading
I read The Memory Palace, and although it isn't a perfect book, is quite a strong and emotional one. Especially sad to me is the lack of resources for those who are not capable of taking care of themselves and not capable even of hunting out the resources that are available.
This book sure makes me grateful for my nice, normal family.
This book sure makes me grateful for my nice, normal family.
57kidzdoc
The finalists for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced earlier today:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us (Atria Books)
Maureen N. McLane, My Poets (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, In the House of the Interpreter (Pantheon)
BIOGRAPHY
Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)
Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Michael Gorra, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (A Liveright Book: W.W. Norton)
Lisa Jarnot, Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography (University of California Press)
Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown Publishers)
CRITICISM
Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Daniel Mendelsohn, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Books)
Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (Wave Books)
Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)
Kevin Young, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness (Graywolf Press)
FICTION
Laurent Binet, HHhH, translated by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco)
Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House)
Lydia Millet, Magnificence (W.W. Norton)
Zadie Smith, NW (The Penguin Press)
NONFICTION
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (The Penguin Press)
Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (A Liveright Book: W.W. Norton)
David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (W.W. Norton)
Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Scribner)
POETRY
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press)
Lucia Perillo, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths (Copper Canyon Press)
Allan Peterson, Fragile Acts (McSweeney’s Books)
D.A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf Press)
A.E. Stallings, Olives (Triquarterly: Northwestern University Press)
"Winners of the National Book Critics Circle book awards will be announced on Thursday, February 28, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. A finalists’ reading will be held on February 27, 2013, also at 6:00 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. Founded in 1974 in New York City, the NBCC is the sole award bestowed by working critics and book-review editors."
More information: http://bookcritics.org/
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us (Atria Books)
Maureen N. McLane, My Poets (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, In the House of the Interpreter (Pantheon)
BIOGRAPHY
Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)
Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Michael Gorra, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (A Liveright Book: W.W. Norton)
Lisa Jarnot, Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography (University of California Press)
Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown Publishers)
CRITICISM
Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Daniel Mendelsohn, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Books)
Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (Wave Books)
Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)
Kevin Young, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness (Graywolf Press)
FICTION
Laurent Binet, HHhH, translated by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco)
Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House)
Lydia Millet, Magnificence (W.W. Norton)
Zadie Smith, NW (The Penguin Press)
NONFICTION
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (The Penguin Press)
Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (A Liveright Book: W.W. Norton)
David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (W.W. Norton)
Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Scribner)
POETRY
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press)
Lucia Perillo, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths (Copper Canyon Press)
Allan Peterson, Fragile Acts (McSweeney’s Books)
D.A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf Press)
A.E. Stallings, Olives (Triquarterly: Northwestern University Press)
"Winners of the National Book Critics Circle book awards will be announced on Thursday, February 28, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. A finalists’ reading will be held on February 27, 2013, also at 6:00 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. Founded in 1974 in New York City, the NBCC is the sole award bestowed by working critics and book-review editors."
More information: http://bookcritics.org/
58rebeccanyc
Interesting list; thanks for posting it.
59kidzdoc
The lists of finalists for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced earlier this morning:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Sonali Deraniyagala, WAVE (Knopf)
Aleksandar Hemon, THE BOOK OF MY LIVES
Rebecca Solnit, THE FARAWAY NEARBY
Jesmyn Ward, MEN WE REAPED
Amy Wilentz, FAREWELL, FRED VOODOO: A LETTER FROM HAITI
BIOGRAPHY:
Scott Anderson, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA: WAR, DECEIT, IMPERIAL FOLLY AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST
Leo Damrosch, JONATHAN SWIFT: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORLD
John Eliot Gardiner, BACH: MUSIC IN THE CASTLE OF HEAVEN
Linda Leavell, HOLDING ON UPSIDE DOWN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARIANNE MOORE
Mark Thompson, BIRTH CERTIFICATE: THE STORY OF DANILO KIS
CRITICISM:
Hilton Als, WHITE GIRLS (McSweeney’s)
Mary Beard, CONFRONTING THE CLASSICS: TRADITIONS, ADVENTURES AND INNOVATIONS
Jonathan Franzen, THE KRAUS PROJECT
Janet Malcolm, FORTY-ONE FALSE STARTS: ESSAYS ON ARTISTS AND WRITERS
Franco Moretti, DISTANT READING
FICTION:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, AMERICANAH
Alice McDermott, SOMEONE
Javier Marias, THE INFATUATIONS
Ruth Ozeki, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING
Donna Tartt, THE GOLDFINCH
NONFICTION:
Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, WHITEY BULGER: AMERICA’S MOST WANTED GANGSTER AND THE MANHUNT THAT BROUGHT HIM TO JUSTICE
Sherri Fink, FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL: LIFE AND DEATH IN A STORM-RAVAGED HOSPITAL
David Finkel, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
George Packer, THE UNWINDING: AN INNER HISTORY OF THE NEW AMERICA
Lawrence Wright, GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY, HOLLYWOOD AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
POETRY:
Frank Bidart, METAPHYSICAL DOG
Lucie Brock-Broido, STAY, ILLUSION
Denise Duhamel, BLOWOUT
Bob Hicok, ELEGY OWED
Carmen Gimenez Smith, MILK AND FILTH
The winners will be announced on 13 March in a ceremony at The New School in NYC. More info:
Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Sonali Deraniyagala, WAVE (Knopf)
Aleksandar Hemon, THE BOOK OF MY LIVES
Rebecca Solnit, THE FARAWAY NEARBY
Jesmyn Ward, MEN WE REAPED
Amy Wilentz, FAREWELL, FRED VOODOO: A LETTER FROM HAITI
BIOGRAPHY:
Scott Anderson, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA: WAR, DECEIT, IMPERIAL FOLLY AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST
Leo Damrosch, JONATHAN SWIFT: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORLD
John Eliot Gardiner, BACH: MUSIC IN THE CASTLE OF HEAVEN
Linda Leavell, HOLDING ON UPSIDE DOWN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARIANNE MOORE
Mark Thompson, BIRTH CERTIFICATE: THE STORY OF DANILO KIS
CRITICISM:
Hilton Als, WHITE GIRLS (McSweeney’s)
Mary Beard, CONFRONTING THE CLASSICS: TRADITIONS, ADVENTURES AND INNOVATIONS
Jonathan Franzen, THE KRAUS PROJECT
Janet Malcolm, FORTY-ONE FALSE STARTS: ESSAYS ON ARTISTS AND WRITERS
Franco Moretti, DISTANT READING
FICTION:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, AMERICANAH
Alice McDermott, SOMEONE
Javier Marias, THE INFATUATIONS
Ruth Ozeki, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING
Donna Tartt, THE GOLDFINCH
NONFICTION:
Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, WHITEY BULGER: AMERICA’S MOST WANTED GANGSTER AND THE MANHUNT THAT BROUGHT HIM TO JUSTICE
Sherri Fink, FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL: LIFE AND DEATH IN A STORM-RAVAGED HOSPITAL
David Finkel, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
George Packer, THE UNWINDING: AN INNER HISTORY OF THE NEW AMERICA
Lawrence Wright, GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY, HOLLYWOOD AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
POETRY:
Frank Bidart, METAPHYSICAL DOG
Lucie Brock-Broido, STAY, ILLUSION
Denise Duhamel, BLOWOUT
Bob Hicok, ELEGY OWED
Carmen Gimenez Smith, MILK AND FILTH
The winners will be announced on 13 March in a ceremony at The New School in NYC. More info:
Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013
60JooniperD
cool - thanks for the lists, all nicely linked, kidzdoc! i was pleased to see the finalists noted this morning, and was thinking it would be a cool reading project, reading all the finalists. though i haven't done well with reading LitCrit in the past...franzen's book grabbed my interest in 2013.
also announced this morning (copied from the website: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/announcing-the-national-book-critics-awards-...:
* Anthony Marra’s novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth) is the debut recipient of the John Leonard Prize, established this year to recognize outstanding first books in any genre. Named to honor the memory of founding NBCC member John Leonard, the prize is uniquely decided by a direct vote of the organization’s nearly 600 members nationwide, whereas the traditional awards are nominated and chosen by the elected 24-member board of directors.
* The recipient of the 2013 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Katherine A. Powers, contributor to many national book review sections, including the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Barnes and Noble Review. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the editor of Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942–1963. For the second time in its 27-year history, the Balakian Citation carries with it a $1,000 cash prize, generously endowed by NBCC board member Gregg Barrios.
* The recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. At 84, Hinojosa-Smith is the dean of Chicano authors, best known for his ambitious Klail City Death Trip cycle of novels. He is also an accomplished translator and essayist, as well as a mentor and inspiration to several generations of writers. A recipient of the 1976 Premio Casa de las Americas, Hinojosa-Smith is professor of literature at the University of Texas, Austin, where he has taught for nearly three decades.
I think a lot of people will be happy to see Marra receive this honour - his book had been a stand-out for so many in 2013.
also announced this morning (copied from the website: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/announcing-the-national-book-critics-awards-...:
* Anthony Marra’s novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth) is the debut recipient of the John Leonard Prize, established this year to recognize outstanding first books in any genre. Named to honor the memory of founding NBCC member John Leonard, the prize is uniquely decided by a direct vote of the organization’s nearly 600 members nationwide, whereas the traditional awards are nominated and chosen by the elected 24-member board of directors.
* The recipient of the 2013 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Katherine A. Powers, contributor to many national book review sections, including the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Barnes and Noble Review. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the editor of Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942–1963. For the second time in its 27-year history, the Balakian Citation carries with it a $1,000 cash prize, generously endowed by NBCC board member Gregg Barrios.
* The recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. At 84, Hinojosa-Smith is the dean of Chicano authors, best known for his ambitious Klail City Death Trip cycle of novels. He is also an accomplished translator and essayist, as well as a mentor and inspiration to several generations of writers. A recipient of the 1976 Premio Casa de las Americas, Hinojosa-Smith is professor of literature at the University of Texas, Austin, where he has taught for nearly three decades.
I think a lot of people will be happy to see Marra receive this honour - his book had been a stand-out for so many in 2013.
61kidzdoc
The winners of the National Book Critic Circle Awards for 2014 were announced on Thursday night:
Poetry: Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog
Criticism: Franco Moretti, Distant Reading
Autobiography: Amy Wilentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti
Biography: Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
Nonfiction: Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Fiction: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-award...
Poetry: Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog
Criticism: Franco Moretti, Distant Reading
Autobiography: Amy Wilentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti
Biography: Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
Nonfiction: Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Fiction: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-award...
62kidzdoc
The finalists for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced yesterday:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Blake Bailey, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait
Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side: A Memoir
Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
Meline Toumani, There Was and There Was Not
BIOGRAPHY:
Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown: An African American Life
S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions
Miriam Pawel, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography
CRITICISM:
Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Inoculation
Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Lynne Tillman, What Would Lynne Tillman Do?
Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
FICTION:
Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings
Lily King, Euphoria
Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea
Marilynne Robinson, Lila
GENERAL NONFICTION:
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
Peter Finn and Petra Couvee, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer
Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free
POETRY:
Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise
Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Christian Wiman, Once in the West
Jake Adam York, Abide
You may have noted that Citizen: An American Lyric is nominated in two categories, Criticism and Poetry. That is not a typographical error, and this is the first time in the 40 year history of the awards that a single book has been nominated in two categories in the same year.
"The awards will be presented on March 12, 2015 at the New School, in a ceremony that is free and open to the public."
More info: http://bookcritics.org
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Blake Bailey, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait
Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side: A Memoir
Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
Meline Toumani, There Was and There Was Not
BIOGRAPHY:
Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown: An African American Life
S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions
Miriam Pawel, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography
CRITICISM:
Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Inoculation
Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Lynne Tillman, What Would Lynne Tillman Do?
Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
FICTION:
Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings
Lily King, Euphoria
Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea
Marilynne Robinson, Lila
GENERAL NONFICTION:
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
Peter Finn and Petra Couvee, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer
Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free
POETRY:
Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise
Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Christian Wiman, Once in the West
Jake Adam York, Abide
You may have noted that Citizen: An American Lyric is nominated in two categories, Criticism and Poetry. That is not a typographical error, and this is the first time in the 40 year history of the awards that a single book has been nominated in two categories in the same year.
"The awards will be presented on March 12, 2015 at the New School, in a ceremony that is free and open to the public."
More info: http://bookcritics.org
63LucindaLibri
>62 kidzdoc:
I spent yesterday and today reading Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. An incredibly powerful and moving work. I hope it wins in BOTH categories! For those who don't know, it addresses the micro-aggressions (and often not-so-micro aggressions) faced everyday by black citizens of the United States (though some of the examples extend beyond that group). I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time.
I spent yesterday and today reading Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. An incredibly powerful and moving work. I hope it wins in BOTH categories! For those who don't know, it addresses the micro-aggressions (and often not-so-micro aggressions) faced everyday by black citizens of the United States (though some of the examples extend beyond that group). I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time.
64kidzdoc
The National Book Critics Circle Award winners were announced last week:
Fiction: Marilynne Robinson, Lila
General Nonfiction: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
Biography: John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Autobiography: Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Poetry: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Criticism: Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
John Leonard Prize: Phil Klay, Redeployment
Fiction: Marilynne Robinson, Lila
General Nonfiction: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
Biography: John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Autobiography: Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Poetry: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Criticism: Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
John Leonard Prize: Phil Klay, Redeployment
65kidzdoc
The finalists for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing)
Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
George Hodgman, Bettyville (Viking)
Margo Jefferson, Negroland (Pantheon)
Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (Grove Press)
BIOGRAPHY:
Terry Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth (Oxford University Press)
Charlotte Gordon, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley (Random House)
T.J. Stiles, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (Alfred A. Knopf)
Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (Harper)
Karin Wieland, translated by Shelley Frisch, Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives (Liveright)
CRITICISM:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau)
Leo Damrosch, Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake (Yale University Press)
Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (Graywolf)
Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (Princeton University Press)
James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life (Brandeis University Press)
FICTION:
Paul Beatty, The Sellout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead)
Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press)
Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth)
Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen (Penguin Press)
NONFICTION:
Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Rome (Liveright)
Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (Spiegel & Grau)
Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury)
Brian Seibert, What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
POETRY:
Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin)
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
Sinéad Morrissey, Parallax and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Frank Stanford, What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press)
"Winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards will be announced on Thursday, March 17, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. A finalists’ reading will be held on March 16, also at 6:00 p.m. at the same location. Both events are free and open to the public."
More info: http://bookcritics.org/
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing)
Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
George Hodgman, Bettyville (Viking)
Margo Jefferson, Negroland (Pantheon)
Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (Grove Press)
BIOGRAPHY:
Terry Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth (Oxford University Press)
Charlotte Gordon, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley (Random House)
T.J. Stiles, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (Alfred A. Knopf)
Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (Harper)
Karin Wieland, translated by Shelley Frisch, Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives (Liveright)
CRITICISM:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau)
Leo Damrosch, Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake (Yale University Press)
Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (Graywolf)
Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (Princeton University Press)
James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life (Brandeis University Press)
FICTION:
Paul Beatty, The Sellout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead)
Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press)
Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth)
Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen (Penguin Press)
NONFICTION:
Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Rome (Liveright)
Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (Spiegel & Grau)
Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury)
Brian Seibert, What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
POETRY:
Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin)
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
Sinéad Morrissey, Parallax and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Frank Stanford, What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press)
"Winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards will be announced on Thursday, March 17, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. A finalists’ reading will be held on March 16, also at 6:00 p.m. at the same location. Both events are free and open to the public."
More info: http://bookcritics.org/
66kidzdoc
Here are the winners of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Awards, which were announced last month.
Fiction: The Sellout by Paul Beatty
General Nonfiction: Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
Autobiography: Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Biography: Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon
Criticism: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Poetry: Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
John Leonard Prize: Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdez Quade
Fiction: The Sellout by Paul Beatty
General Nonfiction: Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
Autobiography: Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Biography: Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon
Criticism: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Poetry: Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
John Leonard Prize: Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdez Quade
67bergs47
The finalists for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Marion Coutts, “The Iceberg”
Jenny Diski, “In Gratitude” (Bloomsbury)
Hope Jahren, “Lab Girl”
Hisham Matar, “The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between”
Kao Kalia Yang, “The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father
BIOGRAPHY:
Nigel Cliff, “Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story”
Ruth Franklin, “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life”
Joe Jackson, “Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary”
Michael Tisserand, “Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White”
Frances Wilson, “Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey”
CRITICISM:
Carol Anderson, “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” (
Mark Greif, “Against Everything: Essays”
Alice Kaplan, “Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic”
Olivia Laing, “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone”
Peter Orner, “Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live”
FICTION:
Michael Chabon, “Moonglow”
Louise Erdrich, “LaRose”
Adam Haslett, “Imagine Me Gone”
Ann Patchett, “Commonwealth”
Zadie Smith, “Swing Time”
GENERAL NONFICTION:
Matthew Desmond, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City”
Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”
Jane Mayer, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War”
John Edgar Wideman, “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File”
POETRY:
Ishion Hutchinson, “House of Lords and Commons”
Tyehimba Jess, “Olio”
Bernadette Mayer, “Works and Days”
Robert Pinsky, “At the Foundling Hospital”
Monica Youn, “Blackacre”
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Marion Coutts, “The Iceberg”
Jenny Diski, “In Gratitude” (Bloomsbury)
Hope Jahren, “Lab Girl”
Hisham Matar, “The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between”
Kao Kalia Yang, “The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father
BIOGRAPHY:
Nigel Cliff, “Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story”
Ruth Franklin, “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life”
Joe Jackson, “Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary”
Michael Tisserand, “Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White”
Frances Wilson, “Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey”
CRITICISM:
Carol Anderson, “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” (
Mark Greif, “Against Everything: Essays”
Alice Kaplan, “Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic”
Olivia Laing, “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone”
Peter Orner, “Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live”
FICTION:
Michael Chabon, “Moonglow”
Louise Erdrich, “LaRose”
Adam Haslett, “Imagine Me Gone”
Ann Patchett, “Commonwealth”
Zadie Smith, “Swing Time”
GENERAL NONFICTION:
Matthew Desmond, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City”
Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”
Jane Mayer, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War”
John Edgar Wideman, “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File”
POETRY:
Ishion Hutchinson, “House of Lords and Commons”
Tyehimba Jess, “Olio”
Bernadette Mayer, “Works and Days”
Robert Pinsky, “At the Foundling Hospital”
Monica Youn, “Blackacre”
68bergs47
The National Book Critics’ Circle has announced its finalists for the best books of 2017, dividing them into six categories of five nominees each.
Fiction
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour
Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Joan Silber, Improvement
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
Nonfiction
Jack Davis, Gulf: The Making of An American Sea
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
Biography
Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The Life and Times of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Edmund Gordon, The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography
Howard Markel, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times
Kenneth Whyte, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
Autobiography
Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Henry Marsh, Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia
Xiaolu Guo, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China
Poetry
Nuar Alsadir, Fourth Person Singular
James Longenbach, Earthling
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas
Frank Ormsby, The Darkness of Snow
Ana Ristović, Directions for Use
Criticism
Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
Camille Dungy,Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History
Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News
Fiction
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour
Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Joan Silber, Improvement
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
Nonfiction
Jack Davis, Gulf: The Making of An American Sea
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
Biography
Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The Life and Times of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Edmund Gordon, The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography
Howard Markel, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times
Kenneth Whyte, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
Autobiography
Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Henry Marsh, Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia
Xiaolu Guo, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China
Poetry
Nuar Alsadir, Fourth Person Singular
James Longenbach, Earthling
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas
Frank Ormsby, The Darkness of Snow
Ana Ristović, Directions for Use
Criticism
Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
Camille Dungy,Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History
Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News
69bergs47
2017 National Book Critics Circle Awards winners
Fiction
Improvement, by Joan Silber
Nonfiction
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, by Frances FitzGerald
Autobiography
Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China, by Xiaolu Guo
Biography
Prairie Fires: The Life and Times of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser
Poetry
Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier
Criticism
You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages, by Carina Chocano
Fiction
Improvement, by Joan Silber
Nonfiction
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, by Frances FitzGerald
Autobiography
Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China, by Xiaolu Guo
Biography
Prairie Fires: The Life and Times of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser
Poetry
Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier
Criticism
You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages, by Carina Chocano
70bergs47
National Book Critics Circle Awards 2018 shortlists announced
Fiction
•Milkman (Anna Burns)
•Slave Old Man (Patrick Chamoiseau, trans by Linda Coverdale,)
•The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Denis Johnson)
•The Mars Room (Rachel Kushner,)
•The House of Broken Angels (Luis Alberto Urrea).
Nonfiction
•The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (Francisco Cantú)
•Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Steve Coll)
•The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt)
•We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (Adam Winkler)
•God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State (Lawrence Wright).
The winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on 14 March
Fiction
•Milkman (Anna Burns)
•Slave Old Man (Patrick Chamoiseau, trans by Linda Coverdale,)
•The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Denis Johnson)
•The Mars Room (Rachel Kushner,)
•The House of Broken Angels (Luis Alberto Urrea).
Nonfiction
•The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (Francisco Cantú)
•Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Steve Coll)
•The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt)
•We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (Adam Winkler)
•God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State (Lawrence Wright).
The winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on 14 March
71bergs47
National Book Critics Circle Awards 2018 shortlists announced
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Richard Beard, The Day That Went Missing: A Family’s Story
Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
Rigoberto Gonzalez, What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood
Nora Krug, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home
Nell Painter, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over
Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir
BIOGRAPHY
Christopher Bonanos, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous
Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
Yunte Huang, Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History
Mark Lamster, The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century
Jane Leavy, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Richard Beard, The Day That Went Missing: A Family’s Story
Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
Rigoberto Gonzalez, What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood
Nora Krug, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home
Nell Painter, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over
Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir
BIOGRAPHY
Christopher Bonanos, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous
Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
Yunte Huang, Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History
Mark Lamster, The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century
Jane Leavy, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created
72bergs47
National Book Critics Circle Awards 2018 shortlists announced
CRITICISM
Robert Christgau, Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017
Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics
Terrance Hayes, To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight
Lacy M. Johnson, The Reckonings: Essays
Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays
POETRY
Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Ada Limón, The Carrying
Erika Meitner, Holy Moly Carry Me
Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
Adam Zagajewski, Asymmetry. Translated by Clare Cavanagh
CRITICISM
Robert Christgau, Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017
Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics
Terrance Hayes, To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight
Lacy M. Johnson, The Reckonings: Essays
Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays
POETRY
Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Ada Limón, The Carrying
Erika Meitner, Holy Moly Carry Me
Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
Adam Zagajewski, Asymmetry. Translated by Clare Cavanagh
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In the US, the winners of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced.
Fiction
•Milkman (Anna Burns)
Nonfiction
•Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan (Steve Coll)
Biography
•Flash: The Making of Weegee The Famous (Christopher Bonanos)
Autobiography
•Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home (Nora Krug)
Poetry
•The Carrying (Ada Limón)
Criticism
•Feel Free: Essays (Zadie Smith)
John Leonard Prize (recognising an outstanding first book in any genre)
•There There (Tommy Orange).
Fiction
•Milkman (Anna Burns)
Nonfiction
•Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan (Steve Coll)
Biography
•Flash: The Making of Weegee The Famous (Christopher Bonanos)
Autobiography
•Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home (Nora Krug)
Poetry
•The Carrying (Ada Limón)
Criticism
•Feel Free: Essays (Zadie Smith)
John Leonard Prize (recognising an outstanding first book in any genre)
•There There (Tommy Orange).
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2019 NBCC Award Finalists
FICTION:
Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat
Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Autobiography
Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child by Laura Cumming
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob
Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller
Biography
Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King
The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin
L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” by Lucasta Miller
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell
FICTION:
Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat
Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Autobiography
Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child by Laura Cumming
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob
Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller
Biography
Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King
The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin
L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” by Lucasta Miller
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell
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Criticism
Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib
Essays One by Lydia Davis
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman
Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 by Peter Schjeldahl
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
Nonfiction
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives by Walt Odets
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder
Poetry
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
Magical Negro by Morgan Parker
Dunce by Mary Ruefle
Doomstead Days by Brian Teare
The NBCC awards will be presented March 12, 2020 at the New School in New York City.
Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib
Essays One by Lydia Davis
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman
Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 by Peter Schjeldahl
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
Nonfiction
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives by Walt Odets
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder
Poetry
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
Magical Negro by Morgan Parker
Dunce by Mary Ruefle
Doomstead Days by Brian Teare
The NBCC awards will be presented March 12, 2020 at the New School in New York City.
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National Book Critics Circle Awards winners announced
16 March 2020
The winners include:
Fiction
Everything Inside: Stories, Edwidge Danticat
Nonfiction
Say Nothing: A true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe
Biography
The Queen: The forgotten life behind an American myth, Josh Levin
Autobiography
Know My Name: A memoir, Chanel Miller
Poetry
Magical Negro, Morgan Parker
Criticism
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate histories of social upheaval ,Saidiya Hartman
John Leonard Prize (recognising an outstanding first book in any genre)
The Yellow House: A memoir, Sarah M Broom.
16 March 2020
The winners include:
Fiction
Everything Inside: Stories, Edwidge Danticat
Nonfiction
Say Nothing: A true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe
Biography
The Queen: The forgotten life behind an American myth, Josh Levin
Autobiography
Know My Name: A memoir, Chanel Miller
Poetry
Magical Negro, Morgan Parker
Criticism
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate histories of social upheaval ,Saidiya Hartman
John Leonard Prize (recognising an outstanding first book in any genre)
The Yellow House: A memoir, Sarah M Broom.
77Pharmacdon
2021 Finalist and Winners
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance, Hanif Abdurraqib
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Jeremy Atherton Lin, Winner
A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir, Rodrigo Garcia
A Ghost In the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes, Albert Samaha
BIOGRAPHY
Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser, Susan Bernofsky
Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, Keisha N. Blain
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, Rebecca Donner, Winner
Mike Nichols: A Life, Mark Harris
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, Alexander Nemerov
CRITICISM
Girlhood, Melissa Febos, Winner
Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?, Jenny Diski
Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?, Jesse McCarthy
Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, Mark McGurl
The Right To Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, Amia Srinivasan
FICTION
The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
Burntcoat, Sarah Hall
The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Winner
Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead
NONFICTION
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Radden Keefe
The Family Roe: An American Story, Joshua Prager
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, Sam Quinones
How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith, Winner
Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit
POETRY
Ceive, B.K. Fischer
The Renunciations, Donika Kelly
Cutlish, Rajiv Mohabir
The Rinehart Frames, Cheswayo Mphanza
frank: sonnets, Diane Seuss, Winner
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Somebody’s Daughter, Ashley C. Ford
My Monticello, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters
Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy, Larissa Pham
Afterparties, Anthony Veasna So, Winner
Philomath: Poems, Devon Walker-Figueroa
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance, Hanif Abdurraqib
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Jeremy Atherton Lin, Winner
A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir, Rodrigo Garcia
A Ghost In the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes, Albert Samaha
BIOGRAPHY
Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser, Susan Bernofsky
Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, Keisha N. Blain
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, Rebecca Donner, Winner
Mike Nichols: A Life, Mark Harris
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, Alexander Nemerov
CRITICISM
Girlhood, Melissa Febos, Winner
Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?, Jenny Diski
Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?, Jesse McCarthy
Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, Mark McGurl
The Right To Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, Amia Srinivasan
FICTION
The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
Burntcoat, Sarah Hall
The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Winner
Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead
NONFICTION
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Radden Keefe
The Family Roe: An American Story, Joshua Prager
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, Sam Quinones
How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith, Winner
Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit
POETRY
Ceive, B.K. Fischer
The Renunciations, Donika Kelly
Cutlish, Rajiv Mohabir
The Rinehart Frames, Cheswayo Mphanza
frank: sonnets, Diane Seuss, Winner
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Somebody’s Daughter, Ashley C. Ford
My Monticello, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters
Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy, Larissa Pham
Afterparties, Anthony Veasna So, Winner
Philomath: Poems, Devon Walker-Figueroa
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For completeness sake
2020 Finalist and Winners
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (WINNER)
Shayla Lawson, This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl
Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women
Alia Volz, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco
BIOGRAPHY
Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (WINNER)
Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
Les Payne, Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s
CRITICISM
Nicole Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (WINNER)
Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces
Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country
Vivian Gornick, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader
Wendy A. Woloson, Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America
FICTION
Martin Amis, Inside Story
Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings
Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet (WINNER)
Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife
Bryan Washington, Memorial
NONFICTION
Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St, Louis and the Violent History of the United States
James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
Sarah Smarsh, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent
Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (WINNER)
POETRY
Victoria Chang, Obit
Francine J. Harris, Here Is The Sweet Hand (WINNER)
Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Imperial Liquor
Chris Nealon, The Shore
Danez Smith, Homie
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans
Raven Leilani, Luster (WINNER)
Megha Majumdar, A Burning
Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
Brandon Taylor, Real Life
C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold
2020 Finalist and Winners
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (WINNER)
Shayla Lawson, This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl
Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women
Alia Volz, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco
BIOGRAPHY
Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (WINNER)
Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
Les Payne, Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s
CRITICISM
Nicole Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (WINNER)
Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces
Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country
Vivian Gornick, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader
Wendy A. Woloson, Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America
FICTION
Martin Amis, Inside Story
Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings
Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet (WINNER)
Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife
Bryan Washington, Memorial
NONFICTION
Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St, Louis and the Violent History of the United States
James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
Sarah Smarsh, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent
Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (WINNER)
POETRY
Victoria Chang, Obit
Francine J. Harris, Here Is The Sweet Hand (WINNER)
Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Imperial Liquor
Chris Nealon, The Shore
Danez Smith, Homie
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans
Raven Leilani, Luster (WINNER)
Megha Majumdar, A Burning
Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
Brandon Taylor, Real Life
C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold
79Pharmacdon
2021 Finalist and Winners
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance
Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Winner
Rodrigo Garcia, A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost In the Throat
Albert Samaha, Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes
BIOGRAPHY
Susan Bernofsky, Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
Keisha N. Blain, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America
Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, Winner
Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life
Alexander Nemerov, Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
CRITICISM
Melissa Febos, Girlhood, Winner
Jenny Diski, Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?
Jesse McCarthy, Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?
Mark McGurl, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon
Amia Srinivasan, The Right To Sex
FICTION
Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus
Rachel Cusk, Second Place
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Winner
Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
NONFICTION
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Joshua Prager, The Family Roe: An American Story
Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed, Winner
Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses
POETRY
B.K. Fischer, Ceive
Donika Kelly, The Renunciations
Rajiv Mohabir, Cutlish
Cheswayo Mphanza, The Rinehart Frames
Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets, Winner
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Ashley C. Ford, Somebody’s Daughter
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello
Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby
Larissa Pham, Pop Song
Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties, Winner
Devon Walker-Figueroa, Philomath
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance
Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Winner
Rodrigo Garcia, A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost In the Throat
Albert Samaha, Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes
BIOGRAPHY
Susan Bernofsky, Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
Keisha N. Blain, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America
Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, Winner
Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life
Alexander Nemerov, Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
CRITICISM
Melissa Febos, Girlhood, Winner
Jenny Diski, Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?
Jesse McCarthy, Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?
Mark McGurl, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon
Amia Srinivasan, The Right To Sex
FICTION
Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus
Rachel Cusk, Second Place
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Winner
Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
NONFICTION
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Joshua Prager, The Family Roe: An American Story
Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed, Winner
Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses
POETRY
B.K. Fischer, Ceive
Donika Kelly, The Renunciations
Rajiv Mohabir, Cutlish
Cheswayo Mphanza, The Rinehart Frames
Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets, Winner
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Ashley C. Ford, Somebody’s Daughter
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello
Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby
Larissa Pham, Pop Song
Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties, Winner
Devon Walker-Figueroa, Philomath
