National Book Critics Circle Announces 2015 Publishing Finalists

The National Book Critics Circle was founded in 1974 with the purpose of supporting book criticism and literary culture. According to the mission statement, the NBCC "honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism and literature." 

The National Book Critics Circle Awards have been presented in March since 1975, honoring the best literature published in the United States during the previous year. The awards are made in six categories: Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.

The NBCC finalists for publishing in 2015 were announced in a Critical Mass blog post on January 18, 2016: National Book Critics Circle Announces It's Finalists for Publishing Year 2015

     

 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY:

• The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
• The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick
• Bettyville by George Hodgman
• Negroland by Margo Jefferson
• H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

BIOGRAPHY:

• Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth by Terry Alford
• Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon 
• Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles
• Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan
• Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives by Karin Wieland, translated by Shelley Frisch

CRITICISM:

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake by Leo Damrosch
• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
• On Elizabeth Bishop by Colm Tóibín
• The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood

                                                                                 

FICTION:

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney
• The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
• Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

NONFICTION:

• SPQR: A History of Rome by Mary Beard
• Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman
• Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
• Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
• What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing by Brian Seibert

POETRY: 

• Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
• How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes
• Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón
• Parallax and Selected Poems by Sinéad Morrissey
• What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford by Frank Stanford

Winners will be announced at the NBCC Awards Ceremony and Reception to be held March 17, 2016 at The New School in New York City, NY