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    Here are the winners of this year’s National Book Critics Circle Awards.

    Literary Hub
    By 
    March 20, 2025, 9:08pm

    Tonight, in a ceremony at the New School in New York City, the National Book Critics Circle announced the winners of its 2024 awards, narrowed down from a long list of finalists in six categories: Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Winners in each of the NBCC’s special categories—the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the NBCC Service Award, the John Leonard Prize for the best first book, the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Toni Morrison Achievement Award—were also celebrated.

    Here are the 2024 winners:

    Autobiography

    Alexei Navalny, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel, Patriot: A Memoir (Knopf)

    Biography

    Cynthia Carr, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

    Criticism

    Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House)

    Fiction

    Hisham Matar, My Friends (Random House)

    Nonfiction

    Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space (Avid Reader)

    Poetry

    Anne Carson, Wrong Norma (New Directions)

    Read an excerpt here.

    Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

    Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Penguin Classics)

    John Leonard Prize for Best First Book

    Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

    Read an excerpt here.

    NBCC Service Award
    Lori Lynn Turner

    The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
    Lauren Michele Jackson

    Toni Morrison Achievement Award
    Third World Press

    The Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
    Sandra Cisneros

    Hanif Abdurraqib Hisham Matar literary prizes National Book Critics Circle Awards NBCC

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