National Book Critics Circle Awards Announces Finalists and Special Award Winners 

The National Book Critics Circle has announced its finalists and special award winners for the 2024 publishing year.

On Thursday, Jan. 22, the NBCC, comprised of nearly 800 members of critics, authors and book publishing professionals, announced its shortlists for six award categories and named its newest special award honorees.

“The NBCC remains, as President Ivan Sandrof said at our first ceremony, ‘fiercely independent,’ the only literary award chosen by the critics themselves,” NBCC President Heather Scott Partington said in a statement shared with PEOPLE.

The National Book Critics Circle Awards announces its first long list

“This year’s list of finalists represents another collection of innovative and daring texts. These essential works break down barriers and expectations,” she continued.

“As censorship and book bans continue, these new classics convey irreplaceable truths and beg to be read. These writers and translators stand shoulder to shoulder with the NBCC winners of the past 50 years,” Partington said. “By celebrating their work, we strive to respect the rights of all people to write and read.”

The recipient of the NBCC Service Award is Lori Lynn Turner, while the recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Lauren Michele Jackson. Finalists in the category include Joanna Biggs, Sarah Chihaya, Rhoda Feng and Jeremy Lybarger.

The Toni Morrison Achievement Award goes to Third World Press, while the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award will go to Sandra Cisneros.

Read the list of National Book Critics Circle finalists.

A new anti-book ban coalition is being launched across the country with the support of authors like Judy Blume and Julie Quinn

Autobiography

• The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History author Manjula Martin (Pantheon)
• A small seed by Wei Tchou (Deep Vellum)
• Minotaur in Calle Lanza Zito Madu (Belt)
• Mother Archives: Memoirs of a Dominican Family by Erika Morillo (University of Iowa)
• Patriot: Memoirs Alexei Navalny, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel (Knopf)

Biography

Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Dreams of Free People’s Faith by Tiya Miles.

Penguin Press

• Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below by Jane Kamensky (WW Norton)
• Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• A Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers Jean Strouse (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Dreams of Free People’s Faith Tiya Miles (Penguin Press)
• A world edited by: Katharine S. White in The New Yorker by Amy Reading (Mariner)

Criticism

• Black Memes: A History of the Images That Make Us Legacy Russell (Verso)
• The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War by Jesse McCarthy (University of Chicago)
• Disrupted attention: how we look at art and performance today by Claire Bishop (Verso)
• Intervals by Marianne Brooker (Fitzcarraldo)
• There’s always this year: about basketball and ascension Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)

Fiction

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland.

Picador

• Beautyland Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Godwin by Joseph O’Neill (Pantheon)
• James Percival Everett (Doubleday)
• My friends author Hisham Matar (Random House)
• Us Fools by Nora Lange (Two Dollar Radio)

Nonfiction

We ourselves are Edwidge Danticat.

Graywolf Press

• Achilles’ Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of the US Invasion of Iraq Steve Coll (Penguin Press)
• Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster at the Edge of Space Adam Higginbotham (avid reader)
• Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano (PublicAffairs)
• Denied: Adoption Politics and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson (St. Martin)
• We are alone by Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf)

Poetry

Dawn Lundy Martin’s Lover’s Guide.

Books about the night ship

• Authentic life by Jennifer Chang (Copper Canyon)
• Consider the Rooster Oliver Baez Bendorf (Night Ship)
• Instructions for lovers Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat)
• Patchy snow, towards the north by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Wrong Norm Anne Carson (New Directions)

Gregg Barrios Book Translation Award

Children of the Ghetto: The Star of the Sea by Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies.

Archipelago

• Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies (Archipelago), Fiction
• Herscht 07769 László Krasznahorkai, translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (New Directions), Fiction
• The Last Supper of the Queer Apostles Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper (Penguin Classics), nonfiction
• Melvill Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter), Fiction
• ON Judith Kiros, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (World Poetry), Poetry
• Traces of Enayat Iman Mersal, translated from Arabic by Robin Moger (Transit), Nonfiction

John Leonard Award

Beside the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Struggle for Justice on Homeland, Rebecca Nagle.

Harper

• With the fire we carry: The struggle of generations for justice on our native land by Rebecca Nagle (Harper)
• Feeding Ghosts: Graphic Memoirsr Tessa Hulls (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)High expectations by Vinson Cunningham (Hogarth)
• Miss May Doesn’t Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius by Carrie Courogen (St. Martin’s)
• Ward according to by Cindy Juyoung Ok (Yale University)
• When the Clock Broke: Fraudsters, Conspiracists, and How America Tore It Apart in the Early 1990s John Ganz (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

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The ceremony, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the awards, will take place on March 20 at the New School in New York. Distinguished guest speaker is Maxine Hong Kingston.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education