The National Book Critics Circle, at its 30th annual prizegiving March 4, honored a group of largely veteran authors, including one whose winning book was 15 years overdue, and another who is still hale and hearty at 94.

In a swiftly moving ceremony kicked off by board chairperson Elizabeth Taylor, the five nominees in each category were asked to stand for applause, then the cover of the winning book was shown while the citation was read by the chair of the judges' panel, and the winner made a—usually brief—acceptance. It was the best procedure the group has yet adopted for making the occasion move smoothly along.

The star of the evening had to be the venerable Studs Terkel, winner of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award for his series of oral histories compiled over 40 years—and all published with André Schiffrin, formerly of Pantheon and most recently head of the New Press. An ebullient Terkel took the podium to recall how Schiffrin had suggested the subjects for his first three books, beginning with Division Street: America, and he had gradually come to enjoy doing them in an "accretion of accidents." Inevitably, with Terkel at his "pulpit," there was a contemporary political reference. Recalling that he and Attorney General John Ashcroft were both alumnae of the University of Chicago Law School—though 30 years apart—Terkel said: "But of course he's much older than I am; maybe 300 years older. You saw him in Arthur Miller's The Crucible." Both before and after his remarks, Terkel received standing ovations.

Paul Hendrickson was the Nonfiction winner for his Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy (Knopf). Acknowledging that he "did want to win, pretty badly," after being nominated twice before, the author paid tribute to his editor, Jonathan Segal, with whom he had worked for 26 years. "I don't think my books have earned what they were projected to earn, but somehow that has never come up," Hendrickson said.

Rebecca Solnit won in Criticism for her River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, cited as a highly original study of the pioneer photographer and his legacy. The author was in California, said her Viking editor, Paul Slovak, who read a brief acceptance in which Solnit acknowledged her debt to her subject, "a brain-damaged, homicidal genius."

The Poetry winner was Susan Stewart for her collection Colombarium (U. of Chicago Press). "It never occurred to me that I would win," she said simply, thanking her family, her editors, "all the poets in the room" and the critics.

The Biography award went to William Taubman for his huge biography Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (Norton). As a political scientist and Sovietologist, said Taubman, he was "not accustomed to the idea of winning awards for writing." He recalled that the book was originally supposed to have been delivered in 1989, but the only sign of impatience his editor, Jim Marrs, showed was that after a time he stopped writing encouraging letters.

The Fiction winner, Edward P. Jones, for The Known World (HarperCollins/Amistad) was described as an author of a novel of slavery that could be put beside the work of Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. A modest Jones said he had "told the people sitting in my row that I wouldn't need to be getting up," and he was deeply grateful, especially to his agent, Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit, who had represented him for 12 years "without anything happening," and to the "extraordinary group of women at Amistad."

Scott McLemee received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and in a witty acceptance told how he had always wanted to be a reviewer but had found it difficult to "write sentences of fewer than 35 words," and to spend days and sleepless nights on reviews that paid $10. He wanted to think that reviewing was a function beyond "providing consumer guidance or acting as low-paid entertainers."