National Book Critics Circle Award

The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".^[1] The first NBCC awards were announced and presented January 16, 1976.^[2]

There are six awards to books published in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year, in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Four of them span the entire NBCC award history; Memoir/Autobiography and Biography were recognized by one "Autobiography/Biography" award for publication years 1983 to 2004, then replaced by two awards. Beginning in 2014, the NBCC also presents a special "first book" award across all six categories, named the John Leonard Award in honor of literary critic and NBCC founding member John Leonard, who died in 2008.^[3]

Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues and paperback editions. Nor does the NBC Circle consider "cookbooks, self help books (including inspirational literature), reference books, picture books or children's books". They do consider "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories".^[4]

The judges are the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members,^[5] namely "professional book review editors and book reviewers".^[6]

Winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March.^[7]

National Book Critics Circle Awards
Awarded for	"the finest books and reviews published in English"
Date	March, annual
Country	United States
Presented by	National Book Critics Circle
First awarded	1975 publications (1976)
Website	bookcritics.org

Winners[]

Fiction[]

Published
1975	E. L. Doctorow	Ragtime
1976	John Gardner	October Light
1977	Toni Morrison	Song of Solomon
1978	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever
1979	Thomas Flanagan	The Year of the French
1980	Shirley Hazzard	The Transit of Venus
1981	John Updike	Rabbit Is Rich
1982	Stanley Elkin	George Mills
1983	William Kennedy	Ironweed
1984	Louise Erdrich	Love Medicine
1985	Anne Tyler	The Accidental Tourist
1986	Reynolds Price	Kate Vaiden
1987	Philip Roth	The Counterlife
1988	Bharati Mukherjee	The Middleman and Other Stories
1989	E. L. Doctorow	Billy Bathgate
1990	John Updike	Rabbit at Rest
1991	Jane Smiley	A Thousand Acres
1992	Cormac McCarthy	All the Pretty Horses
1993	Ernest J. Gaines	A Lesson Before Dying
1994	Carol Shields	The Stone Diaries
1995	Stanley Elkin	Mrs. Ted Bliss
1996	Gina Berriault	Women in Their Beds
1997	Penelope Fitzgerald	The Blue Flower
1998	Alice Munro	The Love of a Good Woman
1999	Jonathan Lethem	Motherless Brooklyn
2000	Jim Crace	Being Dead
2001	W.G. Sebald	Austerlitz
2002	Ian McEwan	Atonement
2003	Edward P. Jones	The Known World
2004	Marilynne Robinson	Gilead
2005	E. L. Doctorow	The March
2006	Kiran Desai	The Inheritance of Loss
2007	Junot Diaz	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2008	Roberto Bolaño	2666
2009	Hilary Mantel	Wolf Hall
2010	Jennifer Egan	A Visit from the Goon Squad
2011	Edith Pearlman	Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories
2012	Ben Fountain	Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
2013	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Americanah
2014	Marilynne Robinson	Lila
2015	Paul Beatty	The Sellout
2016	Louise Erdrich	LaRose
2017	Joan Silber	Improvement
2018	Anna Burns	Milkman
2019	Edwidge Danticat	Everything Inside
2020	Maggie O’Farrell[8]	Hamnet

General nonfiction[]

Published
1975	R. W. B. Lewis	Edith Wharton: A Biography
1976	Maxine Hong Kingston	The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
1977	Walter Jackson Bate	Samuel Johnson
1978	Garry Wills	Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
1978	Maureen Howard	Facts of Life
1979	Telford Taylor	Munich: The Price of Peace
1980	Ronald Steel	Walter Lippmann and the American Century
1981	Stephen Jay Gould	The Mismeasure of Man
1982	Robert Caro	The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
1983	Seymour M. Hersh	The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
1984	Freeman Dyson	Weapons and Hope
1985	J. Anthony Lukas	Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
1986	John W. Dower	War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
1987	Richard Rhodes	The Making of the Atomic Bomb
1988	Taylor Branch	Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63
1989	Michael Dorris	The Broken Cord
1990	Shelby Steele	The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America
1991	Susan Faludi	Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
1992	Norman Maclean	Young Men and Fire
1993	Alan Lomax	The Land Where the Blues Began
1994	Lynn H. Nicholas	The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
1995	Jonathan Harr	A Civil Action
1996	Jonathan Raban	Bad Land: An American Romance
1997	Anne Fadiman	The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
1998	Philip Gourevitch	We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
1999	Jonathan Weiner	Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
2000	Ted Conover	Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
2001	Nicholson Baker	Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
2002	Samantha Power	A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
2003	Paul Hendrickson	Sons of Mississippi
2004	Diarmaid MacCulloch	The Reformation: A History
2005	Svetlana Alexievich	Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
2006	Simon Schama	Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
2007	Harriet A. Washington	Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present
2008	Dexter Filkins	The Forever War
2009	Richard Holmes	The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
2010	Isabel Wilkerson	The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
2011	Maya Jasanoff	Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
2012	Andrew Solomon	Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
2013	Sheri Fink	Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
2014	David Brion Davis	The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
2015	Sam Quinones	Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic
2016	Matthew Desmond	Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
2017	Frances FitzGerald	The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
2018	Steve Coll	Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
2019	Patrick Radden Keefe	Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
2020	Tom Zoellner[8]	Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire

Memoir/Autobiography[]

Published
2005	Francine du Plessix Gray	Them: A Memoir of Parents
2006	Daniel Mendelsohn	The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
2007	Edwidge Danticat	Brother, I'm Dying
2008	Ariel Sabar	My Father’s Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
2009	Diana Athill	Somewhere Towards the End
2010	Darin Strauss	Half a Life
2011	Mira Bartók	The Memory Palace
2012	Leanne Shapton	Swimming Studies
2013	Amy Wilentz	Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti
2014	Roz Chast	Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
2015	Margo Jefferson	Negroland
2016	Hope Jahren	Lab Girl
2017	Xiaolu Guo	Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China
2018	Nora Krug	Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home
2019	Chanel Miller	Know My Name: A Memoir
2020	Cathy Park Hong[8]	Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Biography[]

Published
2005	Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin	American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
2006	Julie Phillips	James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
2007	Tim Jeal	Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
2008	Patrick French	The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
2009	Blake Bailey	Cheever: A Life
2010	Sarah Bakewell	How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne
2011	John Lewis Gaddis	George F. Kennan: An American Life
2012	Robert A. Caro	The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
2013	Leo Damrosch	Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
2014	John Lahr	Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
2015	Charlotte Gordon	Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
2016	Ruth Franklin	Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
2017	Caroline Fraser	Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
2018	Christopher Bonanos	Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous
2019	Josh Levin	The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth
2020	Amy Stanley[8]	Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World

Biography/Autobiography (discontinued)[]

Published
1983	Joyce Johnson	Minor Characters
1984	Joseph Frank	Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859
1985	Leon Edel	Henry James: A Life
1986	Arnold Rampersad	The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941
1987	Donald R. Howard	Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World
1988	Richard Ellmann	Oscar Wilde
1989	Geoffrey C. Ward	A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt
1990	Robert A. Caro	Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II
1991	Philip Roth	Patrimony: A True Story
1992	Carol Brightman	Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World
1993	Edmund White	Genet
1994	Mikal Gilmore	Shot in the Heart
1995	Robert Polito	Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
1996	Frank McCourt	Angela's Ashes
1997	James Tobin	Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II
1998	Sylvia Nasar	A Beautiful Mind
1999	Henry Wiencek	The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White
2000	Herbert P. Bix	Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
2001	Adam Sisman	Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr.Johnson
2002	Janet Browne	Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II
2003	William Taubman	Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
2004	Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan	De Kooning: An American Master

Poetry[]

Published
1975	John Ashbery	Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
1976	Elizabeth Bishop	Geography III
1977	Robert Lowell	Day by Day
1978	L. E. Sissman	Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L. E. Sissman
1979	Philip Levine	Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years From Somewhere
1980	Frederick Seidel	Sunrise
1981	A.R. Ammons	A Coast of Trees
1982	Katha Pollitt	Antarctic Traveler
1983	James Merrill	The Changing Light at Sandover
1984	Sharon Olds	The Dead and the Living
1985	Louise Glück	The Triumph of Achilles
1986	Edward Hirsch	Wild Gratitude
1987	C.K. Williams	Flesh and Blood
1988	Donald Hall	That One Day
1989	Rodney Jones	Transparent Gestures
1990	Amy Gerstler	Bitter Angel
1991	Albert Goldbarth	Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology
1992	Hayden Carruth	Collected Shorter Poems 1946–1991
1993	Mark Doty	My Alexandria
1994	Mark Rudman	Rider
1995	William Matthews	Time and Money
1996	Robert Hass	Sun Under Wood
1997	Charles Wright	Black Zodiac
1998	Marie Ponsot	The Bird Catcher
1999	Ruth Stone	Ordinary Words
2000	Judy Jordan	Carolina Ghost Woods
2001	Albert Goldbarth	Saving Lives
2002	B.H. Fairchild	Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
2003	Susan Stewart	Columbarium
2004	Adrienne Rich	The School Among the Ruins
2005	Jack Gilbert	Refusing Heaven
2006	Troy Jollimore	Tom Thomson in Purgatory
2007	Mary Jo Bang	Elegy
2008	August Kleinzahler	Sleeping it Off in Rapid City[a]
2008	Juan Felipe Herrera	Half the World in Light[a]
2009	Rae Armantrout	Versed
2010	C.D. Wright	One With Others
2011	Laura Kasischke	Space, In Chains
2012	D. A. Powell	Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys
2013	Frank Bidart	Metaphysical Dog
2014	Claudia Rankine	Citizen: An American Lyric
2015	Ross Gay	Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude
2016	Ishion Hutchinson	House of Lords and Commons
2017	Layli Long Soldier	Whereas
2018	Ada Limón	The Carrying
2019	Morgan Parker	Magical Negro
2020	Francine J. Harris[8]	Here Is The Sweet Hand

Criticism[]

Published
1975	Paul Fussell	The Great War and Modern Memory
1976	Bruno Bettelheim	The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
1977	Susan Sontag	On Photography
1978	Meyer Schapiro	Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (Selected Papers, Volume 2)
1979	Elaine Pagels	The Gnostic Gospels
1980	Helen Vendler	Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets
1981	Virgil Thomson	A Virgil Thomson Reader
1982	Gore Vidal	The Second American Revolution and Other Essays
1983	John Updike	Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism
1984	Robert Hass	Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry
1985	William H. Gass	Habitations of the Word: Essays
1986	Joseph Brodsky	Less Than One: Selected Essays
1987	Edwin Denby	Dance Writings
1988	Clifford Geertz	Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author
1989	John Clive	Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History
1990	Arthur C. Danto	Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present
1991	Lawrence L. Langer	Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory
1992	Garry Wills	Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
1993	John Dizikes	Opera in America: A Cultural History
1994	Gerald Early	The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture
1995	Robert Darnton	The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
1996	William H. Gass	Finding a Form
1997	Mario Vargas Llosa	Making Waves
1998	Gary Giddins	Visions of Jazz: The First Century
1999	Jorge Luis Borges	Selected Non-Fictions
2000	Cynthia Ozick	Quarrel & Quandary
2001	Martin Amis	The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000
2002	William H. Gass	Tests of Time
2003	Rebecca Solnit	River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
2004	Patrick Neate	Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet
2005	William Logan	The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin
2006	Lawrence Weschler	Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences
2007	Alex Ross	The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
2008	Seth Lerer	Children's Literature: A Readers' History: Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter
2009	Eula Biss	Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays
2010	Clare Cavanagh	Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
2011	Geoff Dyer	Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
2012	Marina Warner	Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
2013	Franco Moretti	Distant Reading
2014	Ellen Willis	The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis-Aronowitz
2015	Maggie Nelson	The Argonauts
2016	Carol Anderson	White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
2017	Carina Chocano	You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
2018	Zadie Smith	Feel Free: Essays
2019	Saidiya Hartman	Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval
2020	Nicole R. Fleetwood[8]	Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

John Leonard Award[]

Award for a best first book in any genre.

Published
2013	Anthony Marra	A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, novel
2014	Phil Klay	Redeployment, short story collection
2015	Kirstin Valdez Quade	Night at the Fiestas, short story collection
2016	Yaa Gyasi	Homegoing, novel
2017	Carmen Maria Machado	Her Body and Other Parties, short story collection
2018	Tommy Orange	There There, novel
2019	Sarah M. Broom	The Yellow House, memoir
2020	Raven Leilani	Luster, novel

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

Ivan Sandrof was one founder of the National Book Critics Circle^[1] and its first President.^[9]

The Sandrof 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".

1981	none
1982	Leslie A. Marchand[10]
1983	none
1984	The Library of America
1985	none
1986	none
1987	Robert Giroux
1988	none
1989	James Laughlin
1990	Donald Keene
1991	none
1992	Gregory Rabassa
1993	none
1994	William Maxwell
1995	Alfred Kazin Elizabeth Hardwick
1996	Albert Murray
1997	Leslie Fiedler
1998	none
1999	Lawrence Ferlinghetti Pauline Kael
2000	Barney Rosset
2001	Jason Epstein
2002	Richard Howard
2003	Studs Terkel
2004	Louis D. Rubin, Jr.	founder of Algonquin Press, author and editor of more than 50 books
2005	Bill Henderson	founder of Pushcart Press
2006	John Leonard
2007	Emilie Buchwald	co-founder of the Milkweed Editions publishing house
2008	PEN American Center[11]
2009	Joyce Carol Oates
2010	Dalkey Archive Press
2011	Robert Silvers	editor of New York Review of Books
2012	Sandra Gilbert Susan Gubar
2013	Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
2014	Toni Morrison
2015	Wendell Berry
2016	Margaret Atwood
2017	John McPhee
2018	Arte Público Press
2019	Naomi Shihab Nye
2020	The Feminist Press at the City University of New York[8]

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

The Balakian Citation is annual. It honors Nona Balakian, who was one of three NBCC founders.^[1][12] For 43 years, Balakian was an editor on the staff of the New York Times Book Review.^[13] 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".^[14]

Published
1991	George Scialabba
1992
1993
1994
1995	Laurie Stone
1996
1997	Thomas Mallon
1998	Albert Mobilio
1999	Benjamin Schwarz
2000	Daniel Mendelsohn
2001	Michael Gorra
2002	Maureen N. McLane
2003
2004	David Orr	a contributor to The New York Times Book Review and Poetry Magazine
2005	Wyatt Mason	a contributor to Harper's, The New Yorker, The New Republic
2006	Steven G. Kellman
2007	Sam Anderson	of New York magazine
2008	Ron Charles	of The Washington Post
2009	Joan Acocella	of The New Yorker
2010	Parul Sehgal	of Publishers Weekly
2011	Kathryn Schulz	book critic at New York magazine
2012	William Deresiewicz	a contributing writer at The Nation and The American Scholar
2013		contributor to many national book review sections, including the Boston Globe and Washington Post. For the second time in the Balakian Citation history it includes a $1,000 cash prize.
2014		of The New Yorker
2015	Carlos Lozada	of The Washington Post
2016	Michelle Dean	literary critic for The New Yorker, New Republic and others
2017	Charles Finch	literary critic for The New York Times and others
2018	Maureen Corrigan	literary critic for NPR and The Washington Post
2019		of The New Yorker
2020	[8]	critic for The New Republic

Finalists[]

Award year is for the book publication year, currently January 1 to December 31.

2007[]

The 2007 award winners () were announced on March 6, 2008.^[15][16]

Fiction[]

• Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games (HarperCollins)
• Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead)
• Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men (Dial Press)
• Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger's Daughter (Ecco)
• Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher (Simon and Schuster)

General nonfiction[]

• Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism (Hill & Wang)
• 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 (Doubleday)
• Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (Doubleday)
• Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne BKs/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)
• 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, A 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)
• , Sleeping and Waking (Flood)
• Tom Pickard, The Ballad of Jamie Allan (Flood)
• Tadeusz Rózewicz, 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 & Giroux)
• Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• , book critic for New York magazine
• Ron Charles
• Walter Kirn
• Adam Kirsch

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• , writer, editor, and founding publisher of Milkweed Editions, in Minneapolis.

2008[]

The 2008 winners () were announced March 12, 2009.^[17]

Fiction[]

• Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
• Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge (Random House)
• , (West Virginia University Press)

General nonfiction[]

• Drew Gilpin Faust, (Knopf)
• Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Knopf)
• George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford University Press)
• Allan Lichtman, (Atlantic)
• Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (Doubleday)

Autobiography[]

• Rick Bass, Why I Came West (Houghton Mifflin)
• Helene Cooper, The House on Sugar Beach (Simon and Schuster)
• Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter (W.W. Norton)
• Andrew X. Pham, (Harmony Books)
• Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Algonquin)

Biography[]

• Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in an American Century (Penguin Press)
• Patrick French, (Knopf)
• , Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad)
• Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)
• Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf)

Poetry[]

• Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light (University of Arizona Press)^[a]
• , Sources (Turtle Point Press)
• August Kleinzahler, Sleeping it Off in Rapid City (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)^[a]
• Pierre Martory (trans. John Ashbery), The Landscapist (Sheep Meadow Press)
• Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press)

Criticism[]

• Richard Brody, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Metropolitan Books)
• Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life (Boston Review/MIT)
• , Maimonides: The Life and World of One Of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (Doubleday)
• Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter (University of Chicago Press)
• , Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (University of Michigan Press)

The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Ron Charles
• Kathryn Harrison
• Laila Lalami

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• PEN American Center^[11]

2009[]

The 2009 winners () were announced March 11, 2010.

Fiction[]

• Bonnie Jo Campbell, (Wayne State University Press)
• Marlon James, The Book of Night Women (Riverhead)
• Michelle Huneven, (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG)
• Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Holt)
• Jayne Anne Phillips, (Knopf)

General nonfiction[]

• Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin Press)
• Greg Grandin, (Metropolitan Books)
• Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon)
• Tracy Kidder, (Random House)
• William T. Vollmann, Imperial (Viking)

Criticism[]

• Eula Biss, Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press)
• Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (Graywolf Press)
• Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (Norton)
• David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo Press)
• , Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber)

Biography[]

• Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Knopf)
• Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown)
• Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford University Press)
• , Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press)

Autobiography[]

• Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End (Norton)
• , Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Mary Karr, Lit (Harper)
• Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America (Simon & Schuster)
• Edmund White, City Boy ( Bloomsbury)

Poetry[]

• Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan)
• Louise Glück, A Village Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• D. A. Powell, Chronic (Graywolf Press)
• Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008 (Louisiana State University Press)
• Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents (Wave Books)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Joan Acocella
• William Deresiewicz

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Joyce Carol Oates

2010[]

The 2010 winners () were announced March 10, 2011.^[18]

Fiction[]

• Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf)
• Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (Farrar, Straus And Giroux)
• David Grossman, (Knopf)
• Hans Keilson, (Farrar, Straus And Giroux)
• Paul Murray, Skippy Dies (Faber & Faber)

Nonfiction[]

• Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (Spiegel & Grau)
• S.C. Gwynne, (Scribner)
• Jennifer Homans, (Random )
• Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner )
• Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Random)

Criticism[]

• Elif Batuman, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Terry Castle, (Harper )
• Clare Cavanagh, (Yale University Press)
• Susie Linfield, (University of Chicago Press)
• Ander Monson, (Graywolf)

Biography[]

• Sarah Bakewell, (Other Press)
• , (Random House)
• , (Norton)
• Thomas Powers, (Knopf)
• Tom Segev, (Doubleday)

Autobiography[]

• Kai Bird, (Scribner)
• , (Twelve)
• Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (Twelve)
• , (feminist Press)
• Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco)
• Darin Strauss, (McSweeney’s)

Poetry[]

• Anne Carson, Nox (New Directions)
• Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press)
• Terrance Hayes, Lighthead (Penguin Poets)
• Kay Ryan, The Best of It (Grove)
• C.D. Wright, One With Others (Copper Canyon)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• William Deresiewicz
• Ruth Franklin
• Kathryn Harrison
• Parul Sehgal

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Dalkey Archive Press

2011[]

The awards () were presented March 8, 2012, at the New School in New York City.^[19]

Fiction[]

• Dana Spiotta,
• Teju Cole, Open City
• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
• Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child
• Edith Pearlman,

Nonfiction[]

• John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays
• Maya Jasanoff,
• James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
• Adam Hochschild,
• Amanda Foreman,

Criticism[]

• David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything
• Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
• Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
• Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture: Essays
• Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music

Poetry[]

• Bruce Smith, Devotions
• Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch
• Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia
• Forrest Gander, Core Samples From the World
• Laura Kasischke,

Autobiography[]

• Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing
• Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace
• Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America
• Luis J. Rodriguez, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing
• Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War

Biography[]

• Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution
• John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life
• Paul Hendrickson, Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961
• Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
• Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Robert Silvers, editor of New York Review of Books

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Kathryn Schulz

2012[]

The finalists were announced January 14, 2013.^[20] The winners () were announced on February 28, 2013.^[21]

Fiction[]

• Laurent Binet, HHhH tr. by Sam Taylor
• Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
• Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son
• Lydia Millet,
• Zadie Smith, NW

Nonfiction[]

• Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
• Steve Coll,
• Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
• David Quammen,
• Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Criticism[]

• Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach
• Daniel Mendelsohn, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
• Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey
• Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
• , The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness

Poetry[]

• David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
• Lucia Perillo, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths
• , Fragile Acts
• D. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys
• A. E. Stallings, Olives

Autobiography[]

• Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us
• Maureen N. McLane, My Poets
• Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
• Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies
• Ngugi wa Thiong’o, In the House of the Interpreter

Biography[]

• Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
• , All We Know: Three Lives
• Michael Gorra, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
• Lisa Jarnot, Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography
• Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• William Deresiewicz

2013[]

The finalists were announced on January 14, 2014.^[22] The winners () were announced on March 13, 2014.^[23]

Fiction[]

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (Knopf)
• Alice McDermott, Someone (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Javier Marías, The Infatuations, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Knopf)
• Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (Viking)
• Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (Little, Brown)

Nonfiction[]

• Kevin Cullen and , Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice (Norton)
• Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown)
• David Finkel, Thank You for Your Service (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Knopf)

Poetry[]

• Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Knopf)
• Denise Duhamel, Blowout (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon)
• Carmen Gimenez Smith, Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press)

Autobiography[]

• Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave (Knopf)
• Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby (Viking)
• Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped (Bloomsbury)
• Amy Wilentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti (Simon & Schuster)

Biography[]

• Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Doubleday)
• Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (Yale University Press)
• John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (Knopf)
• Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Mark Thompson, Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis (Cornell University Press)

Criticism[]

• Hilton Als, White Girls (McSweeney’s)
• Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations (Liveright)
• Jonathan Franzen, The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus, translated and annotated by Jonathan Franzen with Paul Reitter and Daniel Kehlmann (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Janet Malcolm, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (Verso)

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Rolando Hinojosa-Smith

John Leonard Prize[]

• Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• 
• Ruth Franklin
• Roxana Robinson

2014[]

The finalists were announced on January 19, 2015.^[24] The winners () were announced March 12, 2015.^[25]

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
• and , 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

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
• Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
• Meline Toumani, There Was and There Was Not

Biography[]

• , 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
• , "Literchoor Is My Beat": A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions
• , The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography

Criticism[]

• Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Innoculation
• 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

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Toni Morrison

John Leonard Prize[]

• Phil Klay, Redeployment

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• 
• Charles Finch
• Benjamin Moser
• Lisa Russ Spaar

2015[]

The finalists were announced on January 18, 2016.^[26] The winners () were announced March 17, 2016 at the New School in New York.^[27]

Fiction[]

• Paul Beatty, The Sellout
• Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
• Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth
• Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno
• Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

Nonfiction[]

• Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
• Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
• Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
• Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
• , What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing

Autobiography[]

• Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World
• Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City
• , Bettyville
• Margo Jefferson, Negroland: A Memoir
• Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

Biography[]

• , Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth
• Charlotte Gordon, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
• T.J. Stiles, Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
• Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
• and , Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

Criticism[]

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
• Leo Damrosch, Eternity's Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake
• Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
• Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop
• James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life

Poetry[]

• Ross Gay, Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude
• Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn
• Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things
• Sinéad Morrissey, Parallax: And Selected Poems
• Frank Stanford, What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Wendell Berry

John Leonard Prize[]

• Kirstin Valdez Quade,

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Carlos Lozada

2016[]

The finalists were announced on January 17, 2017.^[28] The winners () were announced March 17, 2017 at the New School in New York.^[29]

Fiction[]

• Michael Chabon, Moonglow: A Novel
• Louise Erdrich, LaRose
• Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone
• Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
• Zadie Smith, Swing Time

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

Autobiography[]

• Marion Coutts, The Iceberg
• Jenny Diski, In Gratitude
• 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
• , Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
• , 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

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

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Margaret Atwood

John Leonard Prize[]

• Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Michelle Dean

2017[]

The finalists were announced on January 21, 2018.^[30][31] The winners () were announced on March 15, 2018 at the New School in New York.^[32]

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: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

Autobiography[]

• Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
• Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
• Henry Marsh, Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon
• Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia
• Xiaolu Guo, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China

Biography[]

• Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams 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
• Ken Whyte, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times

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

Poetry[]

• Nuar Alsadir, Fourth Person Singular
• James Longenbach, Earthling
• Layli Long Soldier, Whereas
• Frank Ormsby, The Darkness of Snow
• Ana Ristovic, Directions for Use

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• John McPhee

John Leonard Prize[]

• Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Charles Finch

2018[]

The finalists were announced on January 22, 2019.^[33] The winners () were announced at the New School in New York on March 14, 2019.^[34]

Fiction[]

• Anna Burns, Milkman
• Patrick Chamoiseau, Slave Old Man. Translated by Linda Coverdale
• Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
• Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room
• Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels

Nonfiction[]

• Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border
• Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
• Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
• Lawrence Wright, God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State

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[]

• , 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

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

John Leonard Prize[]

• Tommy Orange, There There

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

• Arte Público Press^[35]

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• Maureen Corrigan

2019[]

Finalists were announced on January 11, 2020.^[36] The winners () were announced March 12, 2020.^[37]

Fiction[]

• Edwidge Danticat, Everything Inside
• Myla Goldberg, Feast Your Eyes
• Ben Lerner, The Topeka School
• Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive
• Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

Nonfiction[]

• Kate Brown, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
• Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
• Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
• Walt Odets, Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives
• Rachel Louise Snyder, No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Autobiography[]

• Laura Cumming, Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child
• Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
• Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman, Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir
• Mira Jacob, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
• Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

Biography[]

• Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
• Josh Levin, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth
• Lucasta Miller, L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron”
• George Packer, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
• Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

Criticism[]

• Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain
• Lydia Davis, Essays One
• Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
• Peter Schjeldahl, Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018
• Maria Tumarkin, Axiomatic

Poetry[]

• Jericho Brown, The Tradition
• Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic
• Morgan Parker, Magical Negro
• Mary Ruefle, Dunce
• Brian Teare, Doomstead Days

2020[]

Finalists were announced on January 24, 2021.^[38] Winners were announced on 25 March 2021.^[39]

Fiction[]

• Martin Amis, Inside Story (Knopf)
• Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings (W.W. Norton)
• Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet (Knopf)
• Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife (Little, Brown)
• Bryan Washington, Memorial (Riverhead)

Nonfiction[]

• Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St, Louis and the Violent History of the United States (Basic)
• James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (Penguin Press)
• Sarah Smarsh, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs (Scribner)
• Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (Random House)
• Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Harvard Univ. Press)

Autobiography[]

• Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World)
• Shayla Lawson, This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope (HarperPerennial)
• Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl (One World)
• Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women (Graywolf)
• Alia Volz, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (HMH)

Biography[]

• Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner)
• Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (Random House)
• Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf)
• Les Payne, Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X (Liveright)
• Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (Knopf)

Criticism[]

• Nicole Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Harvard Univ. Press)
• Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces (Transit)
• Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country (Feminist Press)
• Vivian Gornick, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Wendy A. Woloson, Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (Univ. of Chicago Press)

Poetry[]

• Victoria Chang, Obit  (Copper Canyon)
• Francine J. Harris, Here Is The Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Imperial Liquor (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press)
• Chris Nealon, The Shore (Wave)
• Danez Smith, Homie (Graywolf)

John Leonard Prize[]

• Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (St. Martin’s)
• Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans (One World)
• Raven Leilani, Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Megha Majumdar, A Burning (Knopf)
• Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain (Grove)
• Brandon Taylor, Real Life (Riverhead)
• C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing[]

• 
• Rumaan Alam
• Jake Cline
• Sophie Haigney
• Dean Rader

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award[]

The Feminist Press at the City University of New York

Notes[]

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to National Book Critics Circle Awards.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to National Book Critics Circle Award winners.

• "Complete list of NBCC winners and finalists". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved April 13, 2020.