The winners of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced on March 17, 2016 at the New School in New York.

Founded in 1974, the National Book Critics Circle Awards are given annually to honor outstanding writing and to foster a national conversation about reading, criticism and literature. The awards are open to any book published in the United States in English (including translations). The NBCC comprises nearly 700 critics and editors from leading newspapers and magazines providing coverage of books.

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

2015 Winners

Autobiography
NEGROLAND by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon)

Biography
ROMANTIC OUTLAWS: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter, Mary Shelley, by Charlotte Gordon (Random House)

Criticism
THE ARGONAUTS by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf)

Fiction
THE SELLOUT by Paul Beatty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction
DREAMLAND: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic, by Sam Quinones (Bloomsbury)

Poetry
CATALOGUE OF UNABASHED GRATITUDE by Ross Gay (University of Pittsburgh Press)

John Leonard Prize
NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS by Kirstin Valdez Quade (W.W. Norton & Company)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Carlos Lozada

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Wendell Berry

2015 Finalists

Autobiography

• THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD by Elizabeth Alexander (Grand Central Publishing)
• THE ODD WOMAN AND THE CITY by Vivian Gornick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• BETTYVILLE by George Hodgman (Viking)
• NEGROLAND by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon)
• H IS FOR HAWK by Helen Macdonald (Grove Press)

Biography

• FORTUNE'S FOOL: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, by Terry Alford (Oxford University Press)
• ROMANTIC OUTLAWS: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter, Mary Shelley, by Charlotte Gordon (Random House)
• CUSTER'S TRIALS: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, by T.J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf)
• STALIN'S DAUGHTER: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, by Rosemary Sullivan (Harper)
• DIETRICH AND RIEFENSTAHL: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives, by Karin Wieland, translated by Shelley Frisch (Liveright)

Criticism

• BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau)
• ETERNITY'S SUNRISE: The Imaginative World of William Blake, by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press)
• THE ARGONAUTS by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf)
• ON ELIZABETH BISHOP by Colm Tóibín (Princeton University Press)
• THE NEAREST THING TO LIFE by James Wood (Brandeis University Press)

Fiction

• THE SELLOUT by Paul Beatty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• FATES AND FURIES by Lauren Groff (Riverhead)
• THE STORY OF MY TEETH by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press)
• THE TSAR OF LOVE AND TECHNO by Anthony Marra (Hogarth)
• EILEEN by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin Press)

Nonfiction

• SPQR: A History of Rome, by Mary Beard (Liveright)
• GIVE US THE BALLOT: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, by Ari Berman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• GHETTOSIDE: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy (Spiegel & Grau)
• DREAMLAND: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic, by Sam Quinones (Bloomsbury)
• WHAT THE EYE HEARS: A History of Tap Dancing, by Brian Seibert (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Poetry

• CATALOGUE OF UNABASHED GRATITUDE by Ross Gay (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• HOW TO BE DRAWN by Terrance Hayes (Penguin)
• BRIGHT DEAD THINGS by Ada Limón (Milkweed Editions)
• PARALLAX AND SELECTED POEMS by Sinéad Morrissey (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• WHAT ABOUT THIS: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, by Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press)

John Leonard Prize

• NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS by Kirstin Valdez Quade (W.W. Norton & Company)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing

• Carlos Lozada

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award

• Wendell Berry