January 23, 2025, 10:00am
Today, the National Book Critics Circle announced their finalists for the best books published in 2024—30 books in six categories—as well as the finalists or winners of five special annual awards: two lifetime achievement awards, the NBCC Service Award, the Nona Balakian Citation, the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, and the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the NBCC awards.
“The NBCC remains, as president Ivan Sandrof said at our first ceremony, ‘fiercely independent,’ the only literary prize selected by the critics themselves,” said NBCC President Heather Scott Partington in a statement. “This year’s finalist list represents another collection of innovative and bold writing. These essential works break down barriers and expectations. As censorship and book bans continue, these new classics communicate indispensable truths and beg to be read.”
Here are the shortlists:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Manjula Martin, The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History (Pantheon)
Wei Tchou, Little Seed (Deep Vellum)
Zito Madu, The Minotaur at Calle Lanza</em. (Belt)
Erika Morillo, Mother Archive: A Dominican Family Memoir (University of Iowa)
Alexei Navalny, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel, Patriot: A Memoir (Knopf)
*
BIOGRAPHY
Jane Kamensky, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below (W. W. Norton)
Cynthia Carr, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jean Strouse, Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Tiya Miles, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press)
Amy Reading, The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker (Mariner)
*
CRITICISM
Legacy Russell, Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us (Verso)
Jesse McCarthy, The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War (University of Chicago)
Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today (Verso)
Marianne Brooker, Intervals (Fitzcarraldo)
Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House)
*
FICTION
Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Joseph O’Neill, Godwin (Pantheon)
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday)
Hisham Matar, My Friends (Random House)
Nora Lange, Us Fools (Two Dollar Radio)
*
NONFICTION
Steve Coll, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq (Penguin Press)
Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space (Avid Reader)
Tricia Romano, The Freaks Came Out To Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture (PublicAffairs)
Gretchen Sisson, Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood (St. Martin’s)
Edwidge Danticat, We’re Alone (Graywolf)
*
POETRY
Jennifer Chang, An Authentic Life (Copper Canyon)
Oliver Baez Bendorf, Consider the Rooster (Nightboat)
Dawn Lundy Martin, Instructions for the Lovers (Nightboat)
Carl Phillips, Scattered Snows, to the North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Anne Carson, Wrong Norma (New Directions)
*
GREGG BARRIOS BOOK IN TRANSLATION PRIZE
Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies, The Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea (Archipelago), Fiction
László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, Herscht 07769 (New Directions), Fiction
Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Penguin Classics), Nonfiction
Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden, Melvill (Open Letter), Fiction
Judith Kiros, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson, O (World Poetry), Poetry
Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger, Traces of Enayat (Transit), Nonfiction
*
JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK
Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight For Justice on Native Land (Harper)
Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations (Hogarth)
Carrie Courogen, Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius (St. Martin’s)
Cindy Juyoung Ok, Ward Toward (Yale University)
John Ganz, When The Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lori Lynn Turner is the recipient of the NBCC Service Award, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is awarded to Lauren Michele Jackson. Both Third World Press and Sandra Cisneros have been selected for lifetime achievement awards.
The winners in all categories will be announced at the National Book Critics Circle Awards ceremony, which will be held on March 20th at the New School in New York City, with Maxine Hong Kingston as guest speaker.
