Founded in 1974, the NBCC is a nonprofit organization of book reviewers and critics that honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature, in part through annual awards for the year’s outstanding books. Books are directly nominated and chosen by leading book critics. The NBCC thus offers the unique opportunity for professional critics to recognize and reward literary excellence.

For more information about the National Book Critics Circle and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, go to http://bookcritics.org/.

2009 Winners

Autobiography:
SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END by Diana Athill (Norton)

Biography:
CHEEVER: A Life by Blake Bailey (Knopf)

Criticism:
NOTES FROM NO MAN'S LAND: American Essays by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press)

Fiction:
WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel (Holt)

Nonfiction:
THE AGE OF WONDER: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (Pantheon)

Poetry:
VERSED by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Joan Acocella

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Joyce Carol Oates

2009 Finalists

Autobiography:
SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END by Diana Athill (Norton)
LIVE THROUGH THIS: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love by Debra Gwartney (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
LIT by Mary Karr (Harper)
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE: My Family's Journey to America by Kati Marton (Simon & Schuster)
CITY BOY by Edmund White (Bloomsbury)

Biography:
CHEEVER: A Life by Blake Bailey (Knopf)
FLANNERY: A Life of Flannery O'Connor by Brad Gooch (Little, Brown)
WHY THIS WORLD: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser (Oxford University Press)
BITTER SPRING: A Life of Ignazio Silone by Stanislao G. Pugliese (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
PASSING STRANGE: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss (Penguin Press)

Criticism:
NOTES FROM NO MAN'S LAND: American Essays by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press)
CLOSE CALLS WITH NONSENSE: Reading New Poetry by Stephen Burt (Graywolf Press)
DANCING IN THE DARK: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein (Norton)
HEROES AND VILLAINS: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture by David Hajdu (Da Capo Press)
PERFECTING SOUND FOREVER: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner (Faber)

Fiction:
AMERICAN SALVAGE by Bonnie Jo Campbell (Wayne State University Press)
THE BOOK OF NIGHT WOMEN by Marlon James (Riverhead)
BLAME by Michelle Huneven (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG)
WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel (Holt)
LARK AND TERMITE by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf)

Nonfiction:
THE HINDUS: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger (Penguin Press)
FORDLANDIA: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)
THE AGE OF WONDER: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (Pantheon)
STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS by Tracy Kidder (Random House)
IMPERIAL by William T. Vollmann (Viking)

Poetry:
VERSED by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan)
A VILLAGE LIFE by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
CHRONIC by D.A. Powell (Graywolf Press)
CAPTIVE VOICES: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008 by Eleanor Ross Taylor (Louisiana State University Press)
MUSEUM OF ACCIDENTS by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)