The National Book Critics Circle has announced 31 finalists in six categories––autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry––for the annual National Book Critic Circle Awards. This year's autobiography category has six finalists, and author Terrance Hayes is nominated in two categories, criticism and poetry.
The winners of three additional prizes have also been announced. The recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is Arte Público Press. Tommy Orange, author of There There, is the recipient of the fifth annual John Leonard Prize, established to recognize outstanding first books in any genre and named in honor of founding NBCC member John Leonard. The recipient of the 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Maureen Corrigan.
The awards will be presented on March 14 at the New School in New York City. The ceremony is free and open to the public. A reading by the finalists will take place the evening before the awards, on March 13, also at the New School. The NBCC hosts a fundraising reception following the March 14 awards ceremony. The tickets, $50 for NBCC members when purchased in advance and $75 to the general public, benefit the NBCC, the awards, and the work that the NBCC does year round to promote books, critics, and writers nationwide.
Here is the complete list of NBCC Award finalists for 2018:
Autobiography:
- Richard Beard, The Day That Went Missing: A Family’s Story (Little, Brown)
- Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir (Catapult)
- Rigoberto Gonzalez, What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of
- Brotherhood (University of Wisconsin Press)
- Nora Krug, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home (Scribner)
- Nell Painter, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over (Counterpoint)
- Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir (Random House)
Biography:
- Christopher Bonanos, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous (Henry Holt & Company)
- Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Yunte Huang, Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History (Liveright)
- Mark Lamster, The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century (Little, Brown)
- Jane Leavy, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created (Harper/HarperCollins)
Criticism:
- Robert Christgau, Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017 (Duke University Press)
- Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (W.W. Norton)
- Terrance Hayes, To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight (Wave)
- Lacy M. Johnson, The Reckonings: Essays (Scribner)
- Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays (Penguin Press)
Fiction:
- Anna Burns, Milkman (Graywolf)
- Patrick Chamoiseau, Slave Old Man; translated by Linda Coverdale (The New Press)
- Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Random House)
- Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room (Scribner)
- Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels (Little, Brown)
Nonfiction:
- Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (Riverhead Books)
- Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Penguin Press)
- Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Penguin Press)
- Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (Liveright)
- Lawrence Wright, God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State (Knopf)
Poetry:
- Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books)
- Ada Limón, The Carrying (Milkweed)
- Erika Meitner, Holy Moly Carry Me (Boa)
- Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf)
- Adam Zagajewski, Asymmetry; translated by Clare Cavanagh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)