The National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, established in 1975, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English." Awards are presented annually to books published in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism.
Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They do consider "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories."
The judges are the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely "professional book review editors and book reviewers." Winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March.
Recipients +National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism winners and finalistsYearAuthorTitleResult1975The Great War and Modern MemoryWinner1976The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy TalesWinnerAda Louise HuxtableKicked a Building Lately?Steven MarcusRepresentations: Essays on Literature and Society Charles RosenArnold Schoenberg E.B. White, ed. by Dorothy Lobrano GuthLetters of E.B. White 1977On PhotographyWinnerArlene CroceAfterimagesMorris DicksteinGates of Eden: American Culture in the SixtiesRichard PoirierRobert Frost: The Work of KnowingGore VidalMatters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays, 1973-19761978Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (Selected Papers, Volume 2)WinnerMalcolm CowleyAnd I Worked at the Writer's Trade: Chapters of Literary History, 1918-1978Eudora WeltyThe Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and ReviewsEdward W. SaidOrientalismWilliam H. GassThe World Within the Word: Essays1979The Gnostic GospelsWinnerFrances FitzGeraldAmerica Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century Richard GilmanDecadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan GubarThe Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary ImaginationRobert Alter with Carol CosmanA Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal1980Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American PoetsWinnerPaul FussellAbroad: British Literary Traveling Between the WarsR.P. Blackmur, ed. by Veronica A. MakowskyHenry Adams Vladimir Nabokov, ed. by Fredson BowersLectures on LiteratureBarbara NovakNature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 1981A Virgil Thomson ReaderWinnerGuy DavenportThe Geography of the Imagination: Forty EssaysMartin GardnerScience: Good, Bad and BogusEdward MendelsonEarly AudenThomas G. BerginBoccaccio1982The Second American Revolution and Other EssaysWinner1983Hugging the Shore: Essays and CriticismWinner1984Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on PoetryWinner1985Habitations of the Word: EssaysWinner1986Less Than One: Selected EssaysWinner1987Dance WritingsWinner1988Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as AuthorWinner1989Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of HistoryWinner1990Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical PresentWinner1991Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of MemoryWinner1992Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade AmericaWinner1993Opera in America: A Cultural HistoryWinner1994The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American CultureWinner1995The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary FranceWinner1996Finding a FormWinner1997Making WavesWinner1998Visions of Jazz: The First CenturyWinner1999Selected Non-FictionsWinner2000Quarrel & QuandaryWinner2001The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000Winner2002Tests of TimeWinner2003River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild WestWinnerDagoberto GilbGritosFinalistNick HornbySongbookRoss KingMichelangelo & the Popes CeilingSusan SontagRegarding the Pain of Others2004Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop PlanetWinnerRichard HowardPaper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003FinalistGraham RobbStrangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th CenturyCraig SeligmanSontag & Kael: Opposites Attract MeJames WoodThe Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel2005The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of TinWinnerHal CrowtherGather at the River: Notes From the Post-Millennial SouthFinalistArthur DantoUnnatural WondersJohn UpdikeStill Looking: Essays on American Art Eliot WeinbergerWhat Happened Here: Bush Chronicles2006Everything That Rises: A Book of ConvergencesWinnerBruce BawerWhile Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From WithinFinalistFrederick CrewsFollies of the Wise: Dissenting EssaysDaniel DennettBreaking the Spell: Religion As a Natural PhenomenonLia PurpuraOn Looking: Essays2007The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth CenturyWinnerColtrane: The Story of a SoundFinalistOnce Upon a QuinceañeraThe Terror DreamTwenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints2008Children's Literature: A Readers' History: Reader's History from Aesop to Harry PotterWinnerEverything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc GodardFinalistMaimonides: The Life and World of One Of Civilization's Greatest MindsOrpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of PoetryThe Men in My Life2009Notes from No Man's Land: American EssaysWinnerClose Calls with Nonsense: Reading New PoetryFinalistDancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great DepressionHeroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and CulturePerfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music2010Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the WestWinnerThe Cruel RadianceFinalistThe Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read ThemThe Professor and Other WritingsVanishing Point: Not a Memoir2011Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and ReviewsWinnerIs That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of EverythingFinalistKaraoke Culture: EssaysOut of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock MusicThe Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.2012Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian NightsWinnerMadness, Rack, and HoneyFinalistReinventing BachThe Grey Album: On the Blackness of BlacknessWaiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture2013Distant ReadingWinnerConfronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and InnovationsFinalistForty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers with Paul Reitter and Daniel KehlmanThe Kraus Project: Essays by Karl KrausWhite Girls2014, edited by Nona Willis AronowitzThe Essential Ellen WillisWinnerCitizen: An American LyricFinalistGeek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of BeautyOn Immunity: An InoculationWhat Would Lynne Tillman Do?2015The ArgonautsWinnerBetween the World and MeFinalistEternity's Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William BlakeOn Elizabeth BishopThe Nearest Thing to Life2016White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial DivideWinnerAgainst Everything: EssaysFinalistAm I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to LiveLooking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary ClassicThe Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone2017You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed MessagesWinnerBunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake NewsFinalistGuidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and HistoryTell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty QuestionsThe Art of Death: Writing the Final Story2018Feel Free: EssaysWinnerIs It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017FinalistThe Reckonings: EssaysTo Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge KnightTyrant: Shakespeare on Politics2019Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social UpheavalWinnerAxiomaticFinalistEssays OneGo Ahead in the RainHot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-20182020Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass IncarcerationWinnerCrap: A History of Cheap Stuff in AmericaFinalistGrieving: Dispatches from a Wounded CountryStranger FacesUnfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader2021GirlhoodWinnerEverything and Less: The Novel in the Age of AmazonFinalistThe Right To Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First CenturyWho Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?: EssaysWhy Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told?: Essays2022Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional AgeWinnerStrangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make UsFinalistSeduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of NarrativeConstructing a Nervous System: A Memoir (trans. by Sophie Hughes)When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold2023Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black InexpressionWinnerPleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans TechniquesFinalistDoppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror WorldCreep: Accusations and ConfessionsThe Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century2024There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension WinnerBlack Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us FinalistDisordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance TodayIntervals 2025Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far RightWinner ( by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda)Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother TongueFinalistGreyhoundOne Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against ThisTo Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other
References
External links
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