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
2020 Winners & Finalists
- Martin Amis, Inside Story (Knopf)
- Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings (W.W. Norton)
- Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet (Knopf)
- Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife (Little, Brown)
- Bryan Washington, Memorial (Riverhead)
Fiction
- Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St, Louis and the Violent History of the United States (Basic)
- James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (Penguin Press)
- Sarah Smarsh, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs (Scribner)
- Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (Random House)
- Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Harvard Univ. Press)
Nonfiction
- Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner)
- Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (Random House)
- Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf)
- Les Payne, Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X (Liveright)
- Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (Knopf)
Biography
- Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World)
- Shayla Lawson, This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope (HarperPerennial)
- Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl (One World)
- Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women (Graywolf)
- Alia Volz, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (HMH)
Autobiography
- Victoria Chang, Obit (Copper Canyon)
- Francine J. Harris, Here Is The Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Imperial Liquor (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press)
- Chris Nealon, The Shore (Wave)
- Danez Smith, Homie (Graywolf)
Poetry
- Nicole Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Harvard Univ. Press)
- Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces (Transit)
- Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country (Feminist Press)
- Vivian Gornick, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Wendy A. Woloson, Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (Univ. of Chicago Press)
Criticism
- Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (St. Martin's)
- Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans (One World)
- Raven Leilani, Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Megha Majumdar, A Burning (Knopf)
- Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain (Grove)
- Brandon Taylor, Real Life (Riverhead)
- C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead)
John Leonard Prize
- Rumaan Alam
- Jake Cline
- Sophie Haigney
- Dean Rader
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
- The Feminist Press at the City University of New York