The winners of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced on Thursday, February 28th at the New School's Tishman Auditorium.

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/.

2012 Winners

Fiction
BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK by Ben Fountain (Ecco)

Nonfiction
FAR FROM THE TREE: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, by Andrew Solomon (Scribner)

Autobiography
SWIMMING STUDIES by Leanne Shapton (Blue Rider Press)

Biography
THE PASSAGE OF POWER: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro (Alfred A. Knopf)

Criticism
STRANGER MAGIC: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)

Poetry
USELESS LANDSCAPE, OR A GUIDE FOR BOYS by D. A. Powell (Graywolf Press)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
William Deresiewicz

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
 

2012 Finalists

Fiction
HHhH by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK by Ben Fountain (Ecco)
THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON by Adam Johnson (Random House)
MAGNIFICENCE by Lydia Millet (W. W. Norton)
NW by Zadie Smith (The Penguin Press)

Nonfiction
BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo (Random House)
PRIVATE EMPIRE: ExxonMobil and American Power, by Steve Coll (The Penguin Press)
WHY DOES THE WORLD EXIST?: An Existential Detective Story, by Jim Holt (A Liveright Book/W. W. Norton)
SPILLOVER: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen (W.W. Norton)
FAR FROM THE TREE: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, by Andrew Solomon (Scribner)

Autobiography
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US by Reyna Grande (Atria Books)
MY POETS by Maureen N. McLane (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
HOUSE OF STONE: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East, by Anthony Shadid (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
SWIMMING STUDIES by Leanne Shapton (Blue Rider Press)
IN THE HOUSE OF THE INTERPRETER by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Pantheon)

Biography
THE PASSAGE OF POWER: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro (Alfred A. Knopf)
ALL WE KNOW: Three Lives, by Lisa Cohen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, by Michael Gorra (A Liveright Book/W. W. Norton)
ROBERT DUNCAN, THE AMBASSADOR FROM VENUS: A Biography, by Lisa Jarnot (University of California Press)
THE BLACK COUNT: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss (Crown Publishers)

Criticism
REINVENTING BACH by Paul Elie (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, by Daniel Mendelsohn (New York Review Books)
MADNESS, RACK, AND HONEY by Mary Ruefle (Wave Books)
STRANGER MAGIC: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
THE GREY ALBUM: On the Blackness of Blackness, by Kevin Young (Graywolf Press)

Poetry
BEWILDERMENT: New Poems and Translations, by David Ferry (University of Chicago Press)
ON THE SPECTRUM OF POSSIBLE DEATHS by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon Press)
FRAGILE ACTS by Allan Peterson (McSweeney’s Books)
USELESS LANDSCAPE, OR A GUIDE FOR BOYS by D. A. Powell (Graywolf Press)
OLIVES by A. E. Stallings (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
William Deresiewicz

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar