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
2003 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- Edward P. Jones, The Known World (Amistad)
Fiction Finalists
- Monica Ali, Brick Lane (Scribner)
- Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Tobias Wolff, Old School (Knopf)
- Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (Viking Press)
- Anne Applebaum, Gulag (Doubleday)
- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Scribner)
- William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down (McSweeneys)
Biography Winner
- William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (Norton)
Biography Finalists
- Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (Picador)
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press)
- Carol Loeb Shloss, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry Winner
- Susan Stewart, Columbarium (University of Chicago Press)
Poetry Finalists
- Carolyn Forche, Blue Hour (HarperCollins)
- Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf)
- Venus Khoury-Ghata, translated by Marilyn Hacker, She Says (Graywolf)
- Mary Szybist, Granted (Alice James Books)
Criticism Winner
- Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows (Viking Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Dagoberto Gilb, Gritos (Grove)
- Nick Hornby, Songbook (McSweeneys)
- Ross King, Michelangelo & the Popes Ceiling (Walker)
- Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Award Winner
- Scott McLemee
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Studs Terkel