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
1989 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate (Random House)
Fiction Finalists
- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (Putnam)
- Oscar Hijeulos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Jane Smiley, Ordinary Love & Good Will (Knopf)
- John Casey, Spartina (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Michael Dorris, The Broken Cord (Harper & Row)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Tracy Kidder, Among Schoolchildren (Houghton Mifflin)
- Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (Pantheon)
- David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922 (Henry Holt)
- Amy Wilentz, The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier (Simon & Schuster)
Biography/Autobiography Winner
- Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (Harper & Row)
Biography/Autobiography Finalists
- Bil Gilbert, And God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War (Atheneum)
- Otto Friedrich, Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations (Random House)
- Roger Moris, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician (Henry Holt)
- Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life: A Memoir (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Poetry Winner
- Rodney Jones, Transparent Gestures (Houghton Mifflin)
Poetry Finalists
- August Kleinzahler, Earthquake Weather (Moyer Bell Ltd.)
- Robert Hass, Human Wishes (Ecco Press)
- Thylias Moss, Pyramid of Bone (University Press of Virginia)
- Nancy Willard, Water Walker (Knopf)
Criticism Winner
- John Clive, Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History (Knopf)
Criticism Finalists
- William L. Vance, America’s Rome (Yale University Press)
- David Bromwich, A Choice of Inheritance: Self and Community from Edmund Burke to Robert Frost (Harvard University Press)
- Charles Solomon, Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation (Knopf)
- Cynthia Ozick, Metaphor & Memory: Essays (Knopf)
Ivan Sandrof/NBCC Board Award Winner
- James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions, for his distinguished contribution to American letters