Here are the winners of this year’s National Book Critics Circle awards.
This evening, during a virtual event, the National Book Critics Circle announced the recipients of its 2021 book awards, spread across six categories, and also awarded the previously announced Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (to the Percival Everett), the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing (to Merve Emre), and the Toni Morrison Achievement Award, established by the NBCC in 2021 to honor institutions that have made lasting and meaningful contributions to book culture (to Cave Canem Foundation). The winners were chosen from a shortlist of finalists by the 24-member board of directors, which consists of editors and critics from across the country. The full list of winners is below:
Autobiography
Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (Little, Brown)
Biography
Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (Little, Brown)
Criticism
Melissa Febos, Girlhood (Bloomsbury)
Fiction
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper)
Nonfiction
Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed (Little, Brown)
Poetry
Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets (Graywolf)
The John Leonard Prize
Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties (Ecco)
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The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Merve Emre
The Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Percival Everett
The Tony Morrison Achievement Award
Cave Canem Foundation
