Breaking News: National Book Critics Circle Award Winners

And the winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award are. . .
Criticism
Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Joan Acocella, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays (Pantheon)
Julia Alvarez, Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA (Viking)
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (Metropolitan/Holt)
Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Poetry
Mary Jo Bang, Elegy (Graywolf Press)
Matthea Harvey, Modern Life (Graywolf Press)
Michael O’Brien, Sleeping and Waking (Flood Editions)
Tom Pickard, The Ballad of Jamie Allan (Flood Editions)
Tadeusz Ró?ewicz, New Poems, trans. by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books)

Biography
Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer (Yale University Press)
Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton (Knopf)
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Knopf)
John Richardson, The Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 (Knopf)
Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy (Penguin Press)

General Nonfiction
Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday)
Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism: A History (Hill & Wang)
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press)
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (Doubleday)
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s)

Autobiography
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying (Knopf)
Joshua Clark, Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone (Free Press)
Joyce Carol Oates, The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (Ecco Press)
Sara Paretsky, Writing in an Age of Silence (Verso)
Anna Politkovskaya, Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin’s Russia (Random House)

Fiction
Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books)
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games (HarperCollins
Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men (Dial Press)
Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger’s Daughter (Ecco Press)
Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher (Simon & Schuster)

Congrats to all the winners. Read the liveblog has it happened at the National Book Critics Circle Awards ceremony.

As I’m reading 2007 award winners for fiction this year, looks like I’ll be adding The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to my TBR. I look forward to it.

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2 comments


  1. Hello
    Please check my award winning poetry ( the editor’s choice award from the international library of poetry), You can LOOK inside for free,
    http://www.amazon.com/WILL-STAND-YOU-POETRY-INSPIRE/dp/1440452067/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231773345&sr=1-1
    Very Respectfully
    Shafi Ghwerien
    Note: Please forward this email to all the people you know, even those you don’t like, hey, they might like you from now on.

    on February 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
  2. Yes you can
    By Shafi Ghwerien*

    when no one believes in your plan
    when no one thinks you can
    when you are lost, because you did not know about the test
    when you fail, when your ship doesn’t even have a sail
    when you don’t even have one fan
    think you can, when everyone is telling you
    they know, this plan does not fit, and you must quit
    when you are looking for gold
    and all you are getting is another hit
    don’t give up, never stop
    give yourself the power
    that will make you weather, the worst danger
    and rise, beyond, what anyone will ever understand
    rise, when you think of the word of the wise
    rise, smiles will replace the cries
    rise, and demand any prize
    you will, rise
    when you reach for the moon
    when you make it happen, now
    not say soon
    trust in God
    God will provide
    this is your plan
    yes you can
    yes you can

    *author of the book (I will stand by you)

    on July 29th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

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