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
2016 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- Louise Erdrich, LaRose (Harper)
Fiction Finalists
- Michael Chabon, Moonglow (Harper)
- Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown)
- Ann Patchett, Commonwealth (Harper)
- Zadie Smith, Swing Time (Penguin Press)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books)
- Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Doubleday)
- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University Press)
- John Edgar Wideman, Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File (Scribner)
Biography Winner
- Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright)
Biography Finalists
- Nigel Cliff, Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story (Harper)
- Joe Jackson, Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Michael Tisserand, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White (Harper)
- Frances Wilson, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Autobiography
- Hope Jahren, Lab Girl (Alfred A. Knopf)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Marion Coutts, The Iceberg (Black Cat Press)
- Jenny Diski, In Gratitude (Bloomsbury)
- Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between (Random House)
- Kao Kalia Yang, The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father (Metropolitan Books)
Poetry Winner
- Ishion Hutchinson, House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Poetry Finalists
- Tyehimba Jess, Olio (Wave Books)
- Bernadette Mayer, Works and Days (New Directions)
- Robert Pinsky, At the Foundling Hospital (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Monica Youn, Blackacre (Graywolf Press)
Criticism Winner
- Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury)
Criticism Finalists
- Mark Greif, Against Everything: Essays (Pantheon)
- Alice Kaplan, Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic (University of Chicago Press)
- Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador)
- Peter Orner, Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live (Catapult)
John Leonard Prize
- Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (Alfred A. Knopf)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Michelle Dean
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Julia M. Klein
- Christian Lorentzen
- Becca Rothfeld
- Leo Robson
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Margaret Atwood
The NBCC Emerging Critics Fellowships
- Taylor Brorby
- Paul W. Gleason
- Zachary Graham
- Yalie Saweeda Kamara
- Summer McDonald
- Ismail Muhamad
- Heather Scott Partington