National Book Critics Circle Award
What is the National Book Critic Circle Award?
The National Book Critics Circle honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature.
Winners are announced each March.
NBCC Fiction Winners by Year
Being Dead by 2000 winner
The March by 2005 winner
The Inheritance of Loss by 2006 winner
2666 by 2008 winner
All the Pretty Horses by 1992 winner
Mrs. Ted Bliss by 1995 winner
The Blue Flower by 1997 winner
George Mills by 1982 winner
Kate Vaiden by 1986 winner
October Light by 1976 winner
The Year of the French by 1979 winner
NBCC Nonfiction Winners by Year
Island on Fire : The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire by Call Number: ebook2020 winner
How the Word Is Passed : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America by Call Number: E441 .S654 20212021 winner
We Were Once a Family : A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by 2023 winner
The warmth of other suns : the epic story of America's great migration by Call Number: E185.6 .W685 2010 and ebook2010 winner
Liberty's Exiles : American loyalists in the revolutionary world by 2011 winner
Far from the Tree : parents, children and the search for identity by Call Number: HV888.5 .S65 20122012 winner
Five Days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital by Call Number: RA975.D57 F56 20132013 winner
Dreamland : the true tale of America's opiate epidemic by Call Number: HV5840.M4 Q56 20152015 winner
Evicted : poverty and profit in the American city by Call Number: HD7287.96.U6 D47 2016 and ebook2016 winner
Directorate S : the C.I.A. and America's secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Call Number: DS371.412 .C64 20192018 winner
Say Nothing : A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by 2019 winner
Newjack by 2000 winner
Sons of Mississippi : a story of race and its legacy by 2003 winner
Voices from Chernobyl : the oral history of a nuclear disaster by Call Number: TD186.5.B35 A4413 20062005 winner
Rough Crossings : Britain, the slaves, and the American Revolution by 2006 winner
Medical Apartheid : the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present by Call Number: R853.H8 W37 2006 and ebook2007 winner
The Age of Wonder : how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science by 2009 winner
The Content of Our Character : a new vision of race in America by Call Number: E185.615 .S723 19901990 winner
Young Men and Fire by 1992 winner
The Rape of Europa : the fate of Europe's treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Call Number: N8795.3.E85 N53 19951994 winner
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Call Number: RA418.5.T73 F33 20121997 winner
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families : stories from Rwanda by Call Number: DT450.435 .G68 19981998 winner
Time, Love, Memory : a great biologist and his quest for the origins of behavior by Call Number: QH457 .W43 19991999 winner
Walter Lippmann and the American Century by 1980 winner
Price of Power by 1983 winner- Weapons and Hope by1984 winner
Common Ground : a turbulent decade in the lives of three American families by Call Number: F73.9.A1 L85 19851985 winner
Arctic Dreams : imagination and desire in a northern landscape by Call Number: QH84.1 .L67 19861986 winner
Parting the Waters : America in the King years, 1954-63 by Call Number: E185.61 .B7914 19881988 winner
Edith Wharton by 1975 winner- Facts of Life by(tie) 1978 winner
Inventing America : Jefferson's Declaration of independence by Call Number: E221 .W64(tie) 1978 winner- Munich by1979 winner
NBCC Biography Winners by Year
Stranger in the Shogun's City : A Japanese Woman and Her World by 2020 winner
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by 2021 winner
How to Live--or--a life of Montaigne : in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by 2010 winner
George F. Kennan : an American life by 2011 winner
Jonathan Swift : His Life and His World by 2013 winner
Tennessee Williams : mad pilgrimage of the flesh by 2014 winner
Romantic Outlaws : the extraordinary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Call Number: PR5841.W8 Z716 20162015 winner
Prairie Fires : the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Call Number: PS3545.I342 Z6455 20172017 winner
Flash: the Making of Weegee the Famous by 2018 winner
The Queen : The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by 2020 winner
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Call Number: DS889.8 .B59 2000ISBN: 97800609313082000 winner
Boswell's Presumptuous Task : the making of the life of Dr. Johnson by Call Number: PR3533.B7 S57 20012001 winner
American Prometheus : the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by 2005 winner
James Tiptree, Jr : The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by 2006 winner
Stanley : the impossible life of Africa's greatest explorer by 2007 winner
The World Is What It Is : the authorized biography of V.S. Naipaul by 2008 winner
Cheever : a life by 2009 winner
Means of Ascent : The years of Lyndon Johnson by Call Number: E847 .C34 1982 v.2ISBN: 97803945283591990 winner
Writing Dangerously : Mary McCarthy And Her World by 1992 winner
Shot in the Heart by 1994 winner
Savage Art : A Biography of Jim Thompson by 1995 winner
Ernie Pyle's War by 1997 winner
A Beautiful Mind by 1998 winner
Minor Characters : a young woman's coming-of-age in the beat orbit of Jack Kerouac by Call Number: PS3560.O3795 Z47 19991983 winner
Dostoevsky by 1984 winner- Henry James, a life by1985 winner
The Life of Langston Hughes. Volume l, 1902-1941 : I, too, sing America by Call Number: PS3515.U274 Z698 1986 and ebook1986 winner
A First-Class Temperament : The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, 1905-1928 by 1989 winner
NBCC Autobiography Winners by Year
Stay True : a memoir by 2022 winner
How to Say Babylon : a memoir by 2023 winner
Half a Life : A Memoir by 2010 winner
The Memory Palace : A Memoir by 2011 winner
Swimming Studies by 2012 winner
Farewell, Fred Voodoo : A Letter from Haiti by 2013 winner
Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by 2014 winner
Nine Continents : A Memoir In and Out of China by 2017 winner
Belonging : A German Reckons with History and Home by 2018 winner
Them : A Memoir of Parents by 2005 winner
The Lost : A Search for Six of Six Million by 2006 winner
Brother, I'm Dying by 2007 winner
My Father's Paradise : A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by 2008 winner
Somewhere Towards the End : A Memoir by 2009 winner
NBCC Poetry Winners by Year
One with Others : [a little book of her days] by 2010 winner
Space, in Chains by 2011 winner
The Carrying by 2018 winner
Carolina Ghost Woods : poems by 2000 winner
Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest : Poems by 2002 winner
Refusing Heaven : Poems by 2005 winner
Tom Thomson in Purgatory by 2006 winner
Elegy : Poems by 2007 winner
Half of the World in Light : new and selected poems by Call Number: PS3558.E74 H36 2008(tie) 2008 winner
Sleeping It off in Rapid City by (tie) 2008 winner
Bitter Angel by 1990 winner
Heaven and Earth : A Cosmology by 1991 winner
Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 by 1992 winner
My Alexandria by 1993 winner
Time and Money by 1995 winner
Sun under Wood : new poems by 1996 winner
Black Zodiac by 1997 winner
The Bird Catcher by 1998 winner
Ordinary Words by 1999 winner
- Sunrise by1980 winner
Coast of Trees by 1981 winner
Antarctic Traveller by 1982 winner
The Changing Light at Sandover by 1983 winner
The Dead and the Living by 1984 winner- The Triumph of Achilles by1985 winner
Wild Gratitude by 1986 winner
Flesh and Blood : Poems by 1987 winner- The One Day by1988 winner
Transparent Gestures by 1989 winner
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror : poems by 1975 winner
Geography III by 1976 winner
Day by Day by 1977 winner- Hello, Darkness : The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman by1978 winner
- Ashes : Poems new & old by(tie) 1979 winner
- Seven Years from Somewhere : Poems by(tie) 1979 winner
NBCC Criticism Winners by Year
Marking Time : Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Call Number: N8356.P75 F54 2020 and ebook2020 winner
Girlhood by 2021 winner
Deadpan : The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression by 2023 winner
Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics : Russia, Poland, and the West by 2010 winner
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition : Selected Essays and Reviews by 2011 winner
Distant Reading by 2013 winner
The Essential Ellen Willis by 2014 winner
The Argonauts by 2015 winner
White Rage : the unspoken truth of our racial divide by Call Number: E185.61 .A5438 2016 and ebook2016 winner
You Play the Girl : on Playboy bunnies, Stepford wives, train wrecks, and other mixed messages by 2017 winner
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments : intimate histories of social upheaval by Call Number: E185.86 .H379 20192019 winner
Quarrel and Quandary : Essays by 2000 winner
The War Against Cliché : essays and reviews, 1971-2000 by 2001 winner
Tests of Time by 2002 winner
The River of Shadows : Eadweard Muybridge and the technological wild west by 2003 winner
Where You're At : notes from the frontline of a hip-hop planet by Call Number: ML3531 .N42 20042004 winner
Everything That Rises : A Book of Convergences by 2006 winner
Children's Literature : A reader's history, from Aesop to Harry Potter. by Call Number: PN1009.A1 L44 2008 and ebook2008 winner
Notes from No Man's Land : American Essays by 2009 winner
Encounters and Reflections : art in the historical present by Call Number: N6490 .D237 19901990 winner
Culture of Bruising : Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture by 1994 winner
The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France by 1995 winner
Finding a Form : Essays by 1996 winner
Making Waves by 1997 winner
Selected Non-Fictions by 1999 winner
- A Virgil Thomson Reader by1981 winner
- The Second American Revolution and Other Essays (1976-1982) by1982 winner
Hugging the Shore : essays and criticism by 1983 winner
Twentieth-Century Pleasures : prose on poetry by 1984 winner- Habitations of the Word by1985 winner
Less Than One : selected essays by 1986 winner
Works and Lives : the anthropologist as author by 1988 winner- Not by Fact Alone : Essay on the Writing and Reading of History by1989 winner
The Uses of Enchantment : the meaning and importance of fairy tales by Call Number: GR550 .B47 19761976 winner
The Gnostic Gospels by 1979 winner
