National Book Critics Circle

Ishion Hutchinson of Ithaca, New York, received the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for his collection House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The finalists were Tyehimba Jess of New York

City for Olio (Wave Books); Bernadette Mayer of East Nassau, New York, for Works and Days (New Directions); Robert Pinsky of Boston for At the Foundling Hospital (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); and Monica Youn of Princeton, New Jersey, for Blackacre (Graywolf Press). Louise Erdrich of Minneapolis received the fiction award for her novel LaRose (Harper). The finalists were Michael Chabon of Berkeley, California, for Moonglow (Harper); Adam Haslett of Middletown, Connecticut, for Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown); Ann Patchett of Nashville for Commonwealth (Harper); and Zadie Smith of London and New York City for Swing Time (Penguin Press). Hope Jahren of Oslo, Norway, received the autobiography award for her memoir, Lab Girl (Knopf). The finalists were Marion Coutts of London for The Iceberg (Black Cat Press); the late Jenny Diski for In Gratitude (Bloomsbury); Hisham Matar of London for The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between (Random House); and Kao Kalia Yang of Minneapolis for The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father (Metropolitan Books). Matthew Desmond of Cambridge, Massachusetts, received the nonfiction award for his book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown). The finalists were Ibram X. Kendi of Gainesville, Florida, for Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books); Jane Mayer of Washington, D.C. for Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Doubleday); Viet Thanh Nguyen of Los Angeles for Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University Press); and John Edgar Wideman of New York City for Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File (Scribner). Carol Anderson of Atlanta received the criticism award for her book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury). The finalists were Mark Greif of Palo Alto, California, for Against Everything: Essays (Pantheon); Alice Kaplan of New Haven, Connecticut, for Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic (University of Chicago Press); Olivia Laing of Cambridge, England, for The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador); and Peter Orner of San Francisco for Am I Alone Here? Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live (Catapult). The National Book Critics Circle, a professional organization composed of 700 book critics and reviewers from across the country, annually honors books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published in the previous year. The next deadline is December 1.

JOHN LEONARD PRIZE

Yaa Gyasi of Berkeley, California, won the John Leonard Award for her novel, Homegoing (Knopf). The annual award is given for a first book in any genre. There is no application process.