The 50th annual National Book Critics Circle Awards were presented at the New School in New York City on March 20 at a ceremony commingling a celebration of the power of the written word and the communities that uphold it with grim recognition of an unprecedentedly tense moment in modern American history. The awards, which honor books published in 2024, are the nation’s sole literary prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book review editors. The NBCC, which was founded in 1974 at the Algonquin Hotel, comprises more than 600 critics and editors.

“Newspapers shutter their books sections, budgets dry up, and charlatans undermine the tradition of a free press—yet the NBCC endures,” said NBCC president Heather Partington-Scott in her opening remarks, noting that the NBCC stands “in defiance of censorship and in celebration of all the unique perspectives offered by each writer in this room.” She added: “As the NBCC moves into our next chapter, we stand with organizations fighting to protect our rights to write and read.”

Maxine Hong Kingston, who won the 1976 NBCC in nonfiction for The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (Knopf), spoke as a distinguished guest at the ceremony in honor of the NBCC's 50th anniversary. In her remarks, she recalled the difficulty of getting The Woman Warrior published. “A publisher who had rejected it—I think it was Little, Brown—said, ‘We can’t publish this. This is a pig in a poke,’ ” she said. “So that's the first thing I learned about what I was doing—I was making a pig in a poke.”

The Greg Barrios Book in Translation Prize went to A Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper (Penguin Classics). Accepting the prize, Harper said that working with Lemebel “has transformed me, and there's nothing more gratifying than when I hear from a reader or a community that he transforms them.”

Lori Lynn Turner, associate director of the New School Creative Writing Program, received the NBCC Service Award, one of the NBCC’s four special awards. Reflecting on her challenging childhood shortly after President Donald Trump announced plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, Turner said, “Education was my ticket out and raised my consciousness and I want this for others,” imploring: “Don't dismantle our schools.”

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (MCD/FSG), which topped last year’s PW Graphic Novel Critics’ Poll, won the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book. In her acceptance via video, Hulls said: “John Leonard was someone who read and beyond that he’s someone who used his power to champion voices that other people wouldn't listen to, including Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison, who are two writers whose words are literally woven into the fabric of Feeding Ghosts.”

Lauren Michele Jackson took home the second of the NBCC’s special awards, the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. “A sturdy critic is one who has no idea what they are going to say before cracking the cover, nor even upon reaching the back of the book,” Jackson remarked, adding: “I know I can say that reading a work and writing my little pieces has brought joy to my life, and hopefully only occasional consternation to others.”

Two more previously announced special awards were presented next. The Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award went to Sandra Cisneros, who, in a video appearance, recited a poem expressing gratitude to “the word wranglers…the word-devout…the word-faithful…I give thanks to you / for your labor / My word kin.”

The Toni Morrison Achievement Award followed, going to Haki R. Madhubuti, who founded Third World Press, the largest Black-owned independent press in the U.S., in 1967. “Literature and art saved my life,” said Madhubuti. “If I had not read Richard Wright at 14, I would not be here today—primarily because for Black people in this country it has never been easy.”

Anne Carson’s Wrong Norma (New Directions) won the award for poetry. A representative accepted the award on Carson’s behalf, thanking Robert Curry, New Directions, and “everyone in her life,” and reading Carson's poem “Hokusai.”

Hanif Abdurraqib received the award for criticism for There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House). Memorializing his late mother, who “when she was not working two jobs she would come home and write a novel on her typewriter,” said: “It is not ever lost on me that whenever there is a book with my name on it that enters the world, it is not only my name.” He added: “First and foremost, I am the son of a mother who wrote.”

Alexei Navalny’s posthumous memoir Patriot, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel (Knopf), won the award for autobiography. Knopf publisher and editor-in-chief Jordan Pavlin accepted the award on behalf of Navalny, the anti-corruption crusader and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin who died in a Russian prison last year, whom Pavlin called “one of the great moral heroes of our time.” In a tearful speech, Pavlin said, “It's very difficult in this dark moment in American history to conceive of a leader as committed to his country, his people, and his ideals as Navalny was.”

Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (FSG) took home the award for biography. “During the time that I worked on this, I saw increasing demonization of the trans community,” Car said of the book. “I dedicated this book to the trans community with hope that maybe it could get better—of course it’s gotten much worse.... All I can say is that I plan to be an ally to that community, and I hope the rest of you will be too.”

The award for nonfiction went to Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (Avid Reader). In his speech, Higginbotham contrasted the era he writes about in the book to now. “It was a time when scientific facts would not yet be dismissed as a matter of belief,” he said. “It was a time when not one of the seven crew of Challenger’s final mission—including two women, the second Black astronaut, and the first Asian American to orbit the Earth—would be described as ‘DEI hires.’ Instead, they were nationally recognized as the best, the most gifted, and the most inspiring individuals the country had to offer.”

Hisham Matar received the fiction award for his novel My Friends (Random House). He recited the words of Ovid before reflecting on the National Book Critics Circle’s name. “That word, ‘circle’ is actually quite significant to me today, because I feel I am very much in a circle with all the writers, those nominated with me, with home I share this prize,” he said. “Books are not in a race.”