National Book Critics Circle
Ada Limón of Lexington, Kentucky, received the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for The Carrying (Milkweed Editions). The finalists were Terrance Hayes of New York City for American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books); Erika Meitner of Blacksburg, Virginia, for Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions); Diane Seuss of Kalamazoo, Michigan, for Still Life With Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press); and Adam Zagajewski of Kraków, Poland, for Asymmetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh. Anna Burns of East Sussex, England, received the fiction award for her novel Milkman (Graywolf Press). The finalists were Patrick Chamoiseau of Martinique, France, for Slave Old Man (New Press), translated from the French and Creole by Linda Coverdale; the late Denis Johnson for The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Random House); Rachel Kushner of Los Angeles for The Mars Room (Scribner); and Luis Alberto Urrea of Naperville, Illinois, for The House of Broken Angels (Little, Brown). Nora Krug of New York City received the autobiography award for her memoir Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home (Scribner). The finalists were Richard Beard of Oxford, England, for The Day That Went Missing: A Family’s Story (Little, Brown); Nicole Chung of Washington, D.C., for All You Can Ever Know (Catapult Books); Rigoberto González of New York City for What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood (University of Wisconsin Press); Nell Painter of Newark, New Jersey, for Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over (Counterpoint Press); and Tara Westover of New York City for Educated (Random House). Steve Coll of New York City won the nonfiction award for Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Penguin Press). The finalists were Francisco Cantú of Tucson for The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border (Riverhead Books); Greg Lukianoff of Washington, D.C., and Jonathan
Haidt of New York City for The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure (Penguin Press); Adam Winkler of Los Angeles for We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (Liveright); and Lawrence Wright of Austin, Texas, for God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State (Knopf). Christopher Bonanos of New York City won the biography award for Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous (Henry Holt). The finalists were Craig Brown of Aldeburgh, England, for Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Yunte Huang of Santa Barbara, California, for Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous
With American History (Liveright); Mark Lamster of Dallas for The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century (Little, Brown); and Jane Leavy of Washington, D.C., and Truro, Massachusetts, for The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created (Harper). Zadie Smith of New York City received the criticism award for her essay collection Feel Free (Penguin Press). The finalists were Robert Christgau of New York City for Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967–2017 (Duke University Press); Stephen Greenblatt of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (Norton); Terrance Hayes of New York City for To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation With the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight (Wave Books); and Lacy M. Johnson of Houston for The Reckonings (Scribner). The National Book Critics Circle, a professional organization composed of 750 book critics and reviewers from across the country, select the winners of the annual awards, which honor books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published in the previous year. The next deadline is December 1. JOHN LEONARD PRIZE Tommy Orange of Angels Camp, California, won the John Leonard Prize for his novel, There There (Knopf). The annual award is given for a first book in any genre. There is no application process. National Book Critics Circle, c/o Marion Winik, Treasurer, 4600 Keswick Road, Baltimore, MD 21210. info@bookcritics.org
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