Each year, the National Book Critics Circle presents awards for the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.
The National Book Critics Circle Award
1977 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (Knopf)
Fiction Finalists
- John Cheever, Falconer (Knopf)
- Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer (Simon & Schuster)
- Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- John Sayles, Union Dues (Atlantic-Little, Brown)
General Nonfiction Winner
- W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich).
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Michael Herr, Dispatches (Knopf)
- David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (Simon & Schuster)
- John McPhee, Coming Into the Country (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (Random)
Poetry Winner
- Robert Lowell, Day by Day (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Poetry Finalists
- John Ashbery, Houseboat Days (Viking)
- Stanley Plumly, Out-of-the-Body Travel (Ecco/Viking)
- W.D. Snodgrass, The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (Boa)
- Gerald Stern, Lucky Life (Houghton)
Criticism Winner
- Susan Sontag, On Photography (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Criticism Finalists
- Arlene Croce, Afterimages (Knopf)
- Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (Basic)
- Richard Poirier, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (Oxford University Press)
- Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays, 1973-1976 (Random)