American Book Critics Pick Finalist for NBCC Awards

In What's the Buzz by Edward Nawotka

NBCC Awards

The National Book Critics Circle has selected its finalist for this year’s annual book prizes, as well as awards for lifetime achievement and reviewing.

The National Book Critics Circle has selected its finalist for this year’s annual book prizes, as well as additional awards for lifetime achievement and reviewing. The awards will be presented on March 12, 2015 at the New School, in a ceremony that is free and open to the public.

Autobiography:

  • Blake Bailey, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait (W.W. Norton & Co.)
  • Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury)
  • Lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side (Tin House)
  • Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure (Random House)
  • Meline Toumani, There Was and There Was Not (Metropolitan Books)

Biography:

  • Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown: An African American Life (W.W. Norton & Co.)
  • S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson (Scribner)
  • John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Co.)
  • Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
  • Miriam Pawel, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (Bloomsbury)

Criticism:

  • Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Innoculation (Graywolf Press)
  • Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty (Graywolf Press)
  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
  • Lynne Tillman, What Would Lynne Tillman Do? (Red Lemonade)
  • Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz (University of Minnesota Press)

Fiction:

  • Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press)
  • Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Books)
  • Lily King, Euphoria (Atlantic Monthly Press)
  • Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books)
  • Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

General Nonfiction:

  • David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • Peter Finn and Petra Couvee, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book (Pantheon)
  • Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt & Co.)
  • Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
  • Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Poetry:

  • Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press)
  • Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Books)
  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
  • Christian Wiman, Once in the West (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
  • Jake Adam York, Abide (Southern Illinois University Press)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing:
Alexandra Schwartz

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award:
Toni Morrison

John Leonard Prize:
Phil Klay, Redeployment (Penguin Press)

About the Author

Edward Nawotka

A widely published critic and essayist, Edward Nawotka serves as a speaker, educator and consultant for institutions and businesses involved in the global publishing and content industries. He was also editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives since the launch of the publication in 2009 until January 2016.