National Book Critics Circle Awards Announces Finalists and Special Award Winners

The National Book Critics Circle has announced its finalists and special award winners for the publishing year 2024.

On Thursday, Jan. 22, the NBCC, comprised of nearly 800 member critics, authors and book publishing professionals, announced its shortlist for six award categories and named its latest special award honorees.

"The NBCC remains, as president Ivan Sandrof said at our first ceremony, ‘fiercely independent,’ the only literary prize selected by the critics themselves,” said NBCC President Heather Scott Partington in a statement shared with PEOPLE.

Related: National Book Critics Circle Awards Announces First-Ever Longlist

“This year’s finalist list represents another collection of innovative and bold writing. These essential works break down barriers and expectations," she continued.

"As censorship and book bans continue, these new classics communicate indispensable truths and beg to be read. These writers and translators stand shoulder-to-shoulder with NBCC honorees of the past 50 years," said Partington. "By celebrating their work, we seek to honor the rights of all people to write and to read.”

The recipient of the NBCC Service Award is Lori Lynn Turner, while the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing honoree is Lauren Michele Jackson. Finalists in the category include Joanna Biggs, Sarah Chihaya, Rhoda Feng and Jeremy Lybarger.

The Toni Morrison Achievement Award is being given to the Third World Press, while the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award will be awarded to Sandra Cisneros.

Read on for the list of National Book Critics Circle finalists.

Related: New Coalition Against Book Bans Launches Nationwide With Support From Authors Like Judy Blume and Julia Quinn

Autobiography

• The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History by Manjula Martin (Pantheon)

• Little Seed by Wei Tchou (Deep Vellum)

• The Minotaur at Calle Lanza by Zito Madu (Belt)
  

• Mother Archive: A Dominican Family Memoir by Erika Morillo (University of Iowa)
  

• Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel (Knopf)

Biography

• Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below by Jane Kamensky (W. W. Norton)

• Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  

• Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers by Jean Strouse (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People by Tiya Miles (Penguin Press)

• The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker by Amy Reading (Mariner)

Criticism

• Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us by Legacy Russell (Verso)
  

• The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War by Jesse McCarthy (University of Chicago)
  

• Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today by Claire Bishop (Verso)
  

• Intervals by Marianne Brooker (Fitzcarraldo)
  

• There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)

Fiction

• Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• Godwin by Joseph O'Neill (Pantheon)

• James by Percival Everett (Doubleday)

• My Friends by Hisham Matar (Random House)

• Us Fools by Nora Lange (Two Dollar Radio)

Nonfiction

• The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq by Steve Coll (Penguin Press)

• Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (Avid Reader)

• The Freaks Came Out To Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano (PublicAffairs)

• Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson (St. Martin’s)

• We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf)

Poetry

• An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang (Copper Canyon)

• Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf (Nightboat)

• Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat)

• Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• Wrong Norma by Anne Carson (New Directions)

Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

• The Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea by Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies (Archipelago), Fiction

• Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (New Directions), Fiction
  

• A Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper (Penguin Classics), Nonfiction

• Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter), Fiction

• O by Judith Kiros, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson (World Poetry), Poetry

• Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger (Transit), Nonfiction
  

John Leonard Prize

• By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight For Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle (Harper)
  

• Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham (Hogarth)
  

• Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius by Carrie Courogen (St. Martin’s)

• Ward Toward by Cindy Juyoung Ok (Yale University)

• When The Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

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The ceremony, which will mark the 50th time the awards have been bestowed, will be held on March 20 at the New School in New York City.  The distinguished guest speaker is Maxine Hong Kingston.

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