National Book Critics Circle

Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends Event
2021-09-29 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | The Center for Fiction, 15 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
When: Wednesday, September 29 from 7:30 to 8:30pm
Where: The Center For Fiction, auditorium
Proof of vaccination and masks required
Join the National Book Critics Circle for an evening of readings from John Leonard Prize for Best First Book finalists/winners Raven Leilani, Julia Phillips, and Brandon Taylor, hosted by Maris Kreizman. We’ll see you IRL* to celebrate the resiliency of New York City’s literary community. *Proof of vaccination and masks required.
Raven Leilani’s work has been published in Granta, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. Leilani received her MFA from NYU and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. Luster is her first novel.
Julia Phillips is the debut author of the internationally bestselling novel Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. A Fulbright fellow, Julia has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. She teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and lives in Brooklyn.
Brandon Taylor is the author of the acclaimed novel Real Life, which has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Iowa, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction.
Maris Kreizman is the host of the literary podcast The Maris Review. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, and more. She’s the VP of Awards for the National Book Critics Circle.
Proof of full vaccination is required at check-in to attend this event in person. Mask wearing is also required throughout the building. Accepted vaccination proofs include:

your CDC vaccination card (or an image of it)
your Excelsior pass (or a printout of it)
a record of vaccination from the healthcare provider who gave you your vaccine

If you remain unvaccinated because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, please contact us at health@centerforfiction.org for assistance or to request a reasonable accommodation.

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2021 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT

NBCC Conversations: Institutional Inequities
2021-09-22 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
A 40-minute conversation and a 20-minute moderator-led Q&A between Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (The Disordered Cosmos, 2021), Nicole Chung (All You Can Ever Know, 2019 Finalist for NBCC Award for Autobiography), Lacy M. Johnson (The Reckonings, 2018 Finalist for NBCC Award for Criticism). Moderator: Ruben Quesada, NBCC Vice President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Free. 7:00 pm Eastern. Register for this event here.

Montana Book Festival: Mining Violence: Writing The Contemporary West
2021-09-16 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Phoenix)
Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021, 1:00 pm Mountain Time
The Montana Book Festival and the National Book Critics Circle are hosting a conversation with Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and Kristiana Kahakauwila about how the history (read: violence) of the American West is mined in order to write contemporary literature toward and about the region today. NBCC board member and poet Keetje Kuipers will moderate.
Register for this virtual event here.
This event is proudly sponsored by Arts Missoula and will be recorded by Missoula Access Community Television as part of a Media Assistance Grant donated to the Montana Book Festival by MCAT.
Sterling HolyWhiteMountain grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation, in Montana. He is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of The Five Wounds (W. W. Norton, April 2021). Her story collection, Night at the Fiestas (W. W. Norton, 2015), won the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation, and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and a best book of 2015 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the American Library Association. Kirstin is the recipient of the John Guare Writer’s Fund Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor at Princeton.
Kristiana Kahakauwila is a hapa writer of kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian), German and Norwegian descent. Her first book, This is Paradise: Stories (Hogarth, 2013), takes as its heart the people and landscapes of contemporary Hawai’i and was named a 2013 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

The Guild Literary Complex and the National Book Critics Circle at the Printers Row Lit Fest
2021-09-11 16:30 - 17:30 (America/Chicago)
The Guild Literary Complex and the National Book Critics Circle present: Exhibit B No. 8 – Sept. 11 at 4:30 p.m. CDT.

Exhibit B is an experimental performance series featuring accessible, multimodal art by diverse, community-conscious artists in Chicago and beyond. This performance—the collective’s eighth—will be at Printer’s Row Lit Fest and feature performances by Ignatius Valentine Aloysius, Sky Goodman, Mojdeh Stoakley, NBCC Board Member Ruben Quesada, and Nicholas Ward. Hosted by NBCC Board Member J. Howard Rosier.

The Guild Literary Complex and the National Book Critics Circle present: Exhibit B No. 8
Sept. 11, 2021
Printers Row Lit Fest
AWM/Feinberg Stage
632 S. Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60605
4:30 p.m. CDT

Racial Consciousness in Literary Criticism
2021-07-15 20:00 (America/New_York)
(L-R): David Mura, Lisa Teasley, Myriam Gurba, Erik Gleibermann
Just as astute fiction writers build their racial awareness to portray racial realities outside their own, discerning literary critics can develop such awareness to review books with unfamiliar racial experience. How can critics deepen understanding of an author’s racially-informed artistic tradition? Should critics seek editorial guidance to identify potential racial blind spots? This diverse panel brings together critics, editors and creative writers to explore these and other questions. The conversation will be moderated by Erik Gleibermann and the panelists are David Mura, Lisa Teasley, and Myriam Gurba.

Hamnet: A Virtual Afternoon with Maggie O'Farrell and Colette Bancroft
2021-06-13 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
NBCC Vice President/Secretary Colette Bancroft will be in conversation with Maggie O’Farrell about her novel Hamnet, which won the NBCC Fiction award, at a virtual event sponsored by Books & Books on Sunday, June 13, at 1:00 pm Eastern. You can register for this free event here.

NBCC Awards Ceremony
2021-03-25 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Wildbound Live
In partnership with the New School Creative Writing program and others, and produced by Wildbound Live.
View the programs for the readings of finalists and the awards ceremony, and watch the show here.

AWP: Edwidge Danticat and Sarah M. Broom on Finding Home
2021-03-05 21:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York)
Two National Book Critics Circle award winning writers, Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat and New Orleanian native Sarah M. Broom, read from their work and engage in a conversation about finding home, their inspiration, research, evolving forms, the unique challenges of writing in these times, and the imaginative process that shapes their originality, what awards mean to writers. Consider this a double masterclass in the art of storytelling.

Sarah Broom
Edwidge Danticat
Jane Ciabattari, Introduction
Marion Winik, Moderator

Sarah Broom is a writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Oxford American, and O Magazine, among others. She is the recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book for her memoir, The Yellow House. A native New Orleanian, she received her Master of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. She was awarded a Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2016 and was a finalist for the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction in 2011. She has also been awarded fellowships at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and The MacDowell Colony. She lives in Harlem.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones; The Dew Breaker; Create Dangerously; Claire of the Sea Light; the memoir Brother, I’m Dying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography; and the story collection Everything Inside, which won the NBCC’s fiction award. She also is the winner of the 2018 Neustadt International Prize and the 2019 St. Louis Literary Award.
Jane Ciabattari is the National Book Critics Circle VP/Awards & Events (and a former National Book Critics Circle president), the author of the story collection Stealing the Fire, a regular contributor to BBC Culture and Lit Hub, and a member of the Writers Grotto. She serves on the advisory boards of The Story Prize, Bay Area Book Festival, and Lit Camp, and is a Pushcart Prize contributing editor.
A University of Baltimore professor, Marion Winik serves on the National Book Critics Circle Board. She is the author of The Big Book of the Dead, winner of the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature. Among her nine other books are New York Times Notable First Comes Love (1996) and Above Us Only Sky (2020). Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun and elsewhere. A board member of the National Book Critics Circle, she reviews for People, Newsday, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews; she hosts The Weekly Reader podcast at WYPR.
Register at AWP.

NBCC Celebrates 2019 Awards & Announces 2020 Finalists
2021-01-24 19:00 (America/New_York) | Wildbound Live
On January 24, the National Book Critics Circle held its first ever virtual awards ceremony, honoring the 2019 award winners. Directly after the ceremony, committee chairs announced the finalists for publishing year 2020.
The event was produced by Wildbound Live. Stream it now via Crowdcast.

Co-sponsored by The New School Creative Writing Program.
Produced by Wildbound and Jane Ciabattari
Filming by David Varno, Kate Belew, Megan Labrise
Additional graphics by Shannon McKenna
With support from
Amazon Literary Partnership 2020 grant
With collaboration from
Luis Jaramillo and Lori Lynn Turner, The New School Creative Writing Program
Cherilyn Parsons and Scott Gelfand, Bay Area Book Festival
Karen Long, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
Boston Book Festival

Brooklyn Book Festival
Steve Wasserman, Heyday Books
Kentucky Book Festival
Twin Cities Book Festival
Virginia Festival for the Book
With special thanks to Fantastic Negrito, two-time Grammy award winner, for permission to use “I’m So Happy I Cry” from his 2020 Grammy-nominated album, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet.
Credits: “I’m So Happy I Cry” (Featuring Tarriona “Tank” Ball from Tank & The Bangas)
Music and Lyrics written by Fantastic Negrito – verse written by Tank. Songwriter and Producer,Rhythm Guitar, Lead Vocals and Background Vocals (with Tarriona “Tank” Ball), Percussion, Xavier Dphrepaulezz. Lead guitar Masa Kohama. Bass guitar, Cornelius Mims. Hammond B3 organ, Lionel Holoman Jr.Recorded at Blackball Universe.
Photo credits: Marisol Diaz, John Midgley, Beowulf Sheehan

Tucson Festival of Books, the Art of Book Reviewing
2020-03-15 10:00 - 11:30 (America/New_York)
Tucson Festival of Books, the Art of Book Reviewing.
Some writers wear many hats. Hear from authors who also work as editors, reviewers, and publishers. A panel discussion hosted by NBCC board member Mark Athitakis, with Gregory McNamee, Brandon Taylor, and Barbara VanDenburgh. Sunday, March 15, 10 a.m., University of Tucson.
UPDATE: This event has been canceled due to concerns about the coronavirus.

Annual NBCC Membership Meeting [canceled]
2020-03-13 10:00 - 11:30 (America/New_York)
This event has been canceled. Please direct any questions to lhertzel@bookcritics.org or mwinik@ubalt.edu.

Awards Announcement [online March 12] and Gala Fundraiser [Sept. 2020]
2020-03-12 18:30 (America/New_York)
The NBCC Awards will be announced online March 12 at 7 p.m. Eastern.
The annual gala fundraiser will be rescheduled for September. Please direct any questions to lhertzel@bookcritics.org or mwinik@ubalt.edu.

The Annual Finalist Reading [canceled]
2020-03-11 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)

AWP2020 NBCC Featured Reading with Louise Erdrich and Alice McDermott
2020-03-06 15:20 - 16:35 (America/New_York)
A reading and conversation with novelists Louise Erdrich (NBCC fiction awards for Love Medicine and LaRose, launching The Night Watchman) and Alice McDermott (NBCC fiction finalist for Someone and The Ninth Hour, National Book Award for Charming Billy). Moderated by former NBCC President Kate Tuttle. Introductions by former NBCC President Jane Ciabattari.

Visit Booth 1455 to meet NBCC members and board members and sign up for membership, including “Friend of” and Student memberships and to learn about our new Emerging Critics program and 2019 awards.

HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level. San Antonio, TX

AWP 2020 Everyone's A Critic: Getting Started in Book Reviewing and Why You Should
2020-03-05 13:45 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
With Marion Winik, Tess Taylor, Richard Santos, Claiborne Smith, and Gregg Barrios
Whether you are just emerging from an MFA program or are an established writer and teacher, joining the national literary conversation by reviewing books can boost your career, build your sense of community, and even make you a little money. in this nuts and bolts session, working critics and book editors describe their career paths, discuss how to get galleys, find markets and pitch book editors, and touch on ethical aspects of reviewing. Useful online resources will be shared.
Room 207, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

NBCC at AWP19 The Future of Criticism: A Conversation with Established and Emerging Critics
2019-09-03 08:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Oregon Convention Center (Level 1), 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland, OR, 97232, United States
In a moment of rapid change, noted emerging and established critics gather and ask: What is the purpose of criticism now? How do we speak? To whom? Who do we imagine our audience(s) to be, and how do we reach them? As modes and means of distributing information increase, what forms of criticism have use and impact? And most importantly, in a world in flux, are critics activists?
Moderator:
Kate Tuttle, President of the National Book Critics Circle, writes about books for the Boston Globe. Her reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Newsday. Her essays on childhood, race, and politics have appeared in Dame, the Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Jane Ciabattari is a literary critic and author of the story collections Stealing the Fire and California Tales. She is National Book Critics Circle VP/Online (and a former NBCC president), a columnist for BBC Culture and The Literary Hub, and a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
Ismail Muhammad is staff writer at the Millions, contributing editor at ZYZZYVA, and a Ph.D. candidate in English at U.C. Berkeley. His nonfiction and criticism have appeared in Slate, Paris Review, the Nation, and other venues. He’s at work on a novel about the Great Migration.
Oscar Villalon is the managing editor of ZYZZYVA. He is a former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as a past board member of the National Book Critics Circle. He is also a contributing editor to Literary Hub.
Hope Wabuke is the author of The Leaving and Movement No.1: Trains. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Award in 2017, and has been published widely in various magazines. She is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a contributing editor for The Root.
