| National Book Critics Circle Award | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | "the finest books and reviews published in English" |
| Presented by | National Book Critics Circle |
| Date | March, annual |
| Country | United States |
| First awarded | 1975 |
| Official website | http://bookcritics.org |
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote the finest books and reviews published in English.
The main awards fall into six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Awards are not given to titles that have been previously published in English, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They also do not "consider cookbooks, self help books (including inspirational literature), reference books, picture books or children's books."[1] Titles are, however, eligible to be awarded if they are "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories above." The NBCC membership elects a 24 person all volunteer Board of Directors to nominate and judge books for the awards and guide all day-to-day activities.[2]
Contents |
The 2010 winners were announced March 10, 2011.[3] (winners in bold)
Fiction
Nonfiction
Criticism
Biography
Autobiography
Poetry
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
The 2009 winners were announced March 11, 2010 (winners in bold)
Fiction
General nonfiction
Criticism
Biography
Autobiography
Poetry
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
The 2008 winners were announced March 12, 2009 (winners in bold).[4]
Fiction
General nonfiction
Autobiography
Biography
Poetry
Criticism
The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
The 2007 award winners (bold) were announced on March 6, 2008.[7][8]
Fiction
General nonfiction
Autobiography
Biography
Poetry
Criticism
The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
| 2010 | Darin Strauss | Half a Life |
| 2009 | Diana Athill | Somewhere Towards the End |
| 2008 | Ariel Sabar | My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq |
| 2007 | Edwidge Danticat | Brother, I'm Dying |
| 2006 | Daniel Mendelsohn | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million |
| 2005 | Francine du Plessix Gray | Them: A Memoir of Parents |
| 2010 | Sarah Bakewell | How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne |
| 2009 | Blake Bailey | Cheever: A Life |
| 2008 | Patrick French | The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul |
| 2007 | Tim Jeal | Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer |
| 2006 | Julie Phillips | James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon |
| 2005 | Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin | American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer |
| 2004 | Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan | De Kooning: An American Master |
| 2003 | William Taubman | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era |
| 2002 | Janet Browne | Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II |
| 2001 | Adam Sisman | Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr.Johnson |
| 2000 | Herbert P. Bix | Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan |
| 1999 | Henry Wiencek | The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White |
| 1998 | Sylvia Nasar | A Beautiful Mind |
| 1997 | James Tobin | Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II |
| 1996 | Frank McCourt | Angela's Ashes |
| 1995 | Robert Polito | Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson |
| 1994 | Mikal Gilmore | Shot in the Heart |
| 1993 | Edmund White | Genet |
| 1992 | Carol Brightman | Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World |
| 1991 | Philip Roth | Patrimony: A True Story |
| 1990 | Robert A. Caro | Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II |
| 1989 | Geoffrey C. Ward | A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt |
| 1988 | Richard Ellmann | Oscar Wilde |
| 1987 | Donald R. Howard | Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World |
| 1986 | Theodore Rosengarten | Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter |
| 1985 | Leon Edel | Henry James: A Life |
| 1984 | Joseph Frank | Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 |
| 1983 | Joyce Johnson | Minor Characters |
| 2010 | C.D. Wright | One With Others |
| 2009 | Rae Armantrout | Versed |
| 2008 | Juan Felipe Herrera | Half the World in Light[5] |
| 2008 | August Kleinzahler | Sleeping it Off in Rapid City[5] |
| 2007 | Mary Jo Bang | Elegy |
| 2006 | Troy Jollimore | Tom Thomson in Purgatory |
| 2005 | Jack Gilbert | Refusing Heaven |
| 2004 | Adrienne Rich | The School Among the Ruins |
| 2003 | Susan Stewart | Columbarium |
| 2002 | B.H. Fairchild | Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest |
| 2001 | Albert Goldbarth | Saving Lives |
| 2000 | Judy Jordan | Carolina Ghost Woods |
| 1999 | Ruth Stone | Ordinary Words |
| 1998 | Marie Ponsot | The Bird Catcher |
| 1997 | Charles Wright | Black Zodiac |
| 1996 | Robert Hass | Sun Under Wood |
| 1995 | William Matthews | Time and Money |
| 1994 | Mark Rudman | Rider |
| 1993 | Mark Doty | My Alexandria |
| 1992 | Hayden Carruth | Collected Shorter Poems 1946–1991 |
| 1991 | Albert Goldbarth | Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology |
| 1990 | Amy Gerstler | Bitter Angel |
| 1989 | Rodney Jones | Transparent Gestures |
| 1988 | Donald Hall | That One Day |
| 1987 | C.K. Williams | Flesh and Blood |
| 1986 | Edward Hirsch | Wild Gratitude |
| 1985 | Louise Glück | The Triumph of Achilles |
| 1984 | Sharon Olds | The Dead and the Living |
| 1983 | James Merrill | The Changing Light at Sandover |
| 1982 | Katha Pollitt | Antarctic Traveler |
| 1981 | A.R. Ammons | A Coast of Trees |
| 1980 | Frederick Seidel | Sunrise |
| 1979 | Philip Levine | Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years From Somewhere |
| 1978 | L. E. Sissman | Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L. E. Sissman |
| 1977 | Robert Lowell | Day by Day |
| 1976 | Elizabeth Bishop | Geography III |
| 1975 | John Ashberry | Self-Portrait in A Convex Mirror |
| 2010 | Clare Cavanagh | Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West |
| 2009 | Eula Biss | Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays |
| 2008 | Seth Lerer | Children’s Literature: A Readers’ History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter |
| 2007 | Alex Ross | The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century |
| 2006 | Lawrence Weschler | Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences |
| 2005 | William Logan | The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin |
| 2004 | Patrick Neate | Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet |
| 2003 | Rebecca Solnit | River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West |
| 2002 | William H. Gass | Tests of Time |
| 2001 | Martin Amis | The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000 |
| 2000 | Cynthia Ozick | Quarrel & Quandary |
| 1999 | Jorge Luis Borges | Selected Non-Fictions |
| 1998 | Gary Giddins | Visions of Jazz: The First Century |
| 1997 | Mario Vargas Llosa | Making Waves |
| 1996 | William H. Gass | Finding a Form |
| 1995 | Robert Darnton | The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France |
| 1994 | Gerald Early | The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture |
| 1993 | John Dizikes | Opera in America: A Cultural History |
| 1992 | Garry Wills | Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America |
| 1991 | Lawrence L. Langer | Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory |
| 1990 | Arthur C. Danto | Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present |
| 1989 | John Clive | Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History |
| 1988 | Clifford Geertz | Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author |
| 1987 | Edwin Denby | Dance Writings |
| 1986 | Joseph Brodsky | Less Than One: Selected Essays |
| 1985 | William H. Gass | Habitations of the Word: Essays |
| 1984 | Robert Hass | Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry |
| 1983 | John Updike | Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism |
| 1982 | Gore Vidal | The Second American Revolution and Other Essays |
| 1981 | Virgil Thomson | A Virgil Thomson Reader |
| 1980 | Helen Vendler | Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets |
| 1979 | Elaine Pagels | The Gnostic Gospels |
| 1978 | Meyer Schapiro | Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (Selected Papers, Volume 2) |
| 1977 | Susan Sontag | On Photography |
| 1976 | Bruno Bettelheim | The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance and Importance of Fairy Tales |
| 1975 | Paul Fussell | The Great War and Modern Memory |
This award has also been presented as the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing and the Ivan Sandrof Award, Contribution to American Arts & Letters.
This citation is awarded annually. It honors Nona Balakian, who was a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle.[9] For 43 years, Balakian was an editor on the staff of the New York Times Book Review.[10] Five finalists are announced each year, one of whom is selected as the winner of the citation. The award has been called "the most prestigious award for book criticism in the country".[11]