The 36th annual NBCC Awards took place March 10 at the New School in Manhattan.
The gathering of book critics, booksellers, and publishing folk honored PW's Parul Seghal with the Nona Balakian Excellence in Reviewing Prize, while John O'Brien's venerable Dalkey Archive Press won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by William H. Gass. In Fiction, Jennifer Egan was a surprise winner to some, besting a strong field that included Jonathan Franzen; Isabel Wilkerson won the Nonfiction award for her study of 20th-century African-American migration; Darin Straus won in Autobiography, in a field that included Patti Smith, for his Half a Life; Clare Cavanagh won in Criticism for her study of lyric poetry in Russia and Poland; in Poetry, C.D Wright took the honors; and Sarah Blakewell won in Biography for her unorthodox take on Montaigne.
