National Book Critics Circle

NBCC Awards Ceremony, Fundraiser, and Finalists Reading
2022-03-17 17:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Join us on Thursday, March 17, for the National Book Critics Circle Awards ceremony, fundraiser, and finalists reading!
REGISTER HERE!

Things kick off at 5:30 pm Eastern with a finalists reading hosted by Ophira Eisenberg. Then stay tuned for our virtual awards ceremony at 7:00 pm Eastern. We’ll be honoring Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing winner Merve Emre, Toni Morrison Achievement Award winner Cave Canem Foundation, and Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award winner Percival Everett, and revealing the winners of the NBCC Awards in seven categories.
REGISTER BY CLICKING HERE!

REGISTER: The Critic As Artist Panel Followed by 2021 NBCC Award Announcements
2022-01-20 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
January 20, 2022. 7 pm EST
Please join President David Varno and the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors for a virtual panel celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing followed by the announcement of the Balakian award by 2015 winner Carlos Lozada and of the finalists for our 2021 awards by previous winners Morgan Parker (Poetry) and Patrick Radden Keefe (Nonfiction). You can register for this free event here.

The Critic As Artist: What We’ve Learned in 30 years of Reviewing
How have critical standards shifted in the past three decades? What considerations must a reviewer include in an assessment of a book? How has the craft of criticism evolved? A conversation among winners of NBCC’s Balakian Award for Excellence in Reviewing, first awarded in 1991, moderated by NBCC president David Varno.
Jo Livingstone (2020) Critic for The New Republic
Daniel Mendelsohn (2000) Critic for New York Review of Books
Parul Sehgal (2010) Critic for The New Yorker
Katy Waldman (2018) Critic for The New Yorker
Moderated by NBCC President David Varno, fiction editor, Publishers Weekly.
Remarks on Nona Balakian by poet Peter Balakian, her nephew.

The 2021 Award Winners and Announcements:

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Winner announced by Carlos Lozada
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Winner announced by Jacob M. Appel
Toni Morrison Award
Winner announced by Jacob M. Appel

Finalist announcements for the John Leonard Prize and the Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry awards by Morgan Parker and Patrick Radden Keefe.

About the National Book Critics Circle
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. It was founded in 1974 to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism in all media and to create a way for critics to communicate with one another about their professional concerns. It consists of more than 700 active book reviewers, plus approximately 200 student members and supporting friends.
Regular voting membership is open to professional book review editors and book reviewers. Also available are non-voting memberships for those in the publishing field and a non-voting student membership. If you would like to join, please visit www.bookcritics.org.

The Art of Reviewing Literature in Translation
2021-11-21 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom
The National Book Critics Circle is pleased to announce that it will be launching a new prize for work in translation starting with the 2022 publishing year. The Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize will honor the best book of any genre translated into English and published in the United States.
In honor of the new prize, on Sunday, November 21, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time the National Book Critics Circle will hold a panel with literary translators and critics, discussing strategies for book critics reviewing a work in translation.
Register for the free Zoom webinar here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xyU7So79Rb-HSquxm4r2Eg
Panelists include:
Jeremy Tiang is a novelist, playwright and translator from Chinese. Originally from Singapore, he lives in New York City.
Emma Ramadan translates books of all genres from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Fulbright for her work. Her recent translations include Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying, Kamel Daoud’s Zabor, or the Psalms, and Anne Garréta’s In Concrete.
Samuel Martin is a co-editor of Hopscotch Translation and teaches French at the University of Pennsylvania. He has translated works by several contemporary writers including Jean-Christophe Bailly and Georges Didi-Huberman; his translation of Didi-Huberman’s photo-essay Bark was a co-winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and was longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize.
Kevin Blankinship is a professor of Arabic at Brigham Young University and a contributing editor at New Lines Magazine. He has written about books and culture for The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and more. His translations from Arabic have appeared in academic journals as well as ArabLit Quarterly and the Ithra Cultural Center in Saudi Arabia. He tweets as @AmericanMaghreb.
Shelley Frisch’s translations from German, which include biographies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl (dual biography), and Franz Kafka along with many other works of fiction and nonfiction, have been awarded numerous translation prizes, including the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. Her translation of Peter Neumann’s Jena 1800, for FSG, will be published in February, and the following month will see publication, by Princeton University Press, of The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka.
Discussion will be moderated Tara Wanda Merrigan, NBCC board member and chair of the NBCC’s Translation Prize Working Group.

Starting a Lit Mag: The NBCC's Adam Dalva in Conversation with Astra Magazine
2021-11-18 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
On Thursday, November 18th at 8 PM EST, Adam Dalva will moderate a conversation with the team of a new forthcoming magazine, Astra Magazine. Editor-in-Chief Nadja Spiegelman (former web editor of the Paris Review), Deputy Editor Sam Rutter, and Poetry Editor Aria Aber will give a behind the scenes look at the work that goes into starting a magazine. They will discuss global literature, the state of literary criticism, and discuss what they hope to achieve with Astra Magazine. This is an NBCC members event that will also be open to the public on Zoom.
Register for the free Zoom webinar here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eAFZOlwnTv2sKD2Y3Kd9Eg
Nadja Spiegelman is the author of I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This and several award-winning comics for children. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, NewYorker.com, The Cut and more. The former online editor of The Paris Review, she is now the editor in chief of Astra Magazine, a new international literary magazine forthcoming in 2022.
Samuel Rutter is a writer and translator from Melbourne, Australia. His work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The White Review and The Paris Review, and he is a regular contributor to ARTNews and T Magazine. He is the Deputy Editor of Astra Magazine
Aria Aber is based in Berkeley, CA. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Poetry Review and elsewhere. She is the author of Hard Damage, which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and a Whiting Award. She is currently a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.
Adam Dalva’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Paris Review. Adam serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and is the Books Editor for Words Without Borders. He teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers University.
Photo credit for Nadja Spiegelman: Bek Andersen

Litquake Event: Alternative Histories
2021-10-12 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | The American Bookbinders Museum, 355 Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Sponsored by Yerba Buena Community Benefit District
Co-presented by The National Book Critics Circle
Join author Ricco Villanueva Siasoco in a conversation with three debut novelists about the process of building alternative histories of the American West, from the Gold Rush through World War I. Patty Enrado’s A Village in the Fields highlights a compelling but buried piece of American history: the Filipino-American contribution to the farm labor movement; Rishi Reddi’s epic Passage West, Los Angeles Times’ Best California Book of 2020, explores a Punjabi sharecropper family in California during World War I, as they work and live alongside their Mexican in-laws and Japanese neighbors; while Tom Lin’s debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, transforms the genre of the Western in a story of revenge for forced labor in the American railroad’s expansion. FREE, $5-10 suggested donation (pre-registration required). Register here.
This program is indoors. Mask and proof of vaccination are required at the door. Please read the requirements at litquake.org/covid.
Browse Litquake’s bookstore here — https://bookshop.org/shop/litquake

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.
