National Book Critics Circle Awards
1975
Fiction: E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime
Non-Fiction: R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton, A Biography
Poetry: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: Poems
Criticism: Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
1976
Fiction: John Gardner, October Light
Non-Fiction: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III
Criticism: Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
1977
Fiction: Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Non-Fiction: Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson
Poetry: Robert Lowell, Day by Day
Criticism: Susan Sontag, On Photography
1978
Fiction: John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
Non-Fiction: (1) Maureen Howard, Facts of Life (2) Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
Poetry: L. E. Sissman, Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L. E. Sissman
Criticism: Meyer Schapiro, Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (Selected Papers, Volume 2)
1979
Fiction: Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French
Non-Fiction: Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price of Peace
Poetry: Philip Levine, Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years From Somewhere
Criticism: Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
1980
Fiction: Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus
Non-Fiction: Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century
Poetry: Frederick Seidel, Sunrise
Criticism: Helen Vendler, Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets
1981
Fiction: John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich
Non-Fiction: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
Poetry: A. R. Ammons, A Coast of Trees
Criticism: Virgil Thompson, A Virgil Thompson Reader
1982
Fiction: Stanley Elkin, George Mills
Non-Fiction: Robert Caro, The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Poetry: Katha Pollitt, Antarctic Traveler
Criticism: Gore Vidal, The Second American Revolution and Other Essays
1983
Fiction: William Kennedy, Ironweed
Non-Fiction: Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
Poetry: James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover
Criticism: John Updike, Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism
1984
Fiction: Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Non-Fiction: Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope
Poetry: Sharon Olds, The Dead and the Living
Criticism: Robert Hass, Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry
1985
Fiction: Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
Non-Fiction: J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
Poetry: Louise Glück, The Triumph of Achilles
Criticism: William H. Gass, Habitations of the Word: Essays
1986
Fiction: Reynolds Price, Kate Vaiden
Non-Fiction: Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape
Poetry: Edward Hirsch, Wild Gratitude
Criticism: Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: Selected Essays
1987
Fiction: Philip Roth, The Counterlife
Non-Fiction: Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Poetry: C. K. Williams, Flesh and Blood
Criticism: Edwin Denby, Dance Writings
1988
Fiction: Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories
Non-Fiction: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63
Poetry: Donald Hall, The One Day
Criticism: Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author
1989
Fiction: E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate
Non-Fiction: Michael Dorris, The Broken Cord
Poetry: Rodney Jones, Transparent Gestures
Criticism: John Clive, Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History
1990
Fiction: John Updike, Rabbit at Rest
Non-Fiction: Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America
Poetry: Amy Gerstler, Bitter Angel
Criticism: Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present
1991
Fiction: Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
Non-Fiction: Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Poetry: Albert Goldbarth, Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology
Criticism: Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory
1992
Fiction: Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Non-Fiction: Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire
Poetry: Hayden Carruth, Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991
Criticism: Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
1993
Fiction: Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying
Non-Fiction: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began
Poetry: Mark Doty, My Alexandria
Criticism: John Dizikes, Opera in America: A Cultural History
1994
Fiction: Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
Non-Fiction: Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
Poetry: Mark Rudman, Rider
Criticism: Gerald Early, The Culture of Bruising
1995
Fiction: Stanley Elkin, Mrs. Ted Bliss
Non-Fiction: Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action
Poetry: William Matthews, Time and Money
Criticism: Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
1996
Fiction: Gina Berriault, Women in Their Beds
Non-Fiction: Jonathan Raban, Bad Land: An American Romance
Poetry: Robert Hass, Sun Under Wood
Criticism: William H. Gass, Finding a Form
1997
Fiction: Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
Non-Fiction: Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Poetry: Charles Wright, Black Zodiac
Criticism: Mario Vargas Llosa, Making Waves
1998
Fiction: Alice Munro, The Love of a Good Woman
Non-Fiction: Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
Poetry: Marie Ponsot, The Bird Catcher
Criticism: Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century
1999
Fiction: Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
Non-Fiction: Jonathan Weiner, Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
Poetry: Ruth Stone, Ordinary Words
Criticism: Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions
2000
Fiction: Jim Crace, Being Dead
Non-Fiction: Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
Poetry: Judy Jordan, Carolina Ghost Woods
Criticism: Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary
2001
Fiction: W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz
Non-Fiction: Nicholson Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
Poetry: Albert Goldbarth, Saving Lives
Criticism: Martin Amis, The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000
2002
Fiction: Ian McEwan, Atonement
Non-Fiction: Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
Poetry: B. H. Fairchild, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
Criticism: William H. Gass, Tests of Time
2003
Fiction: Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Non-Fiction: Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi
Poetry: Susan Stewart, Columbarium
Criticism: Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
2004
Fiction: Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Non-Fiction: Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History
Poetry: Adrienne Rich, The School Among the Ruins
Criticism: Patrick Neate, Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet
2005
Fiction: E. L. Doctorow, The March
Non-Fiction: Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
Poetry: Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven
Criticism: William Logan, The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin
2006
Fiction: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
Non-Fiction: Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
Poetry: Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory
Criticism: Lawrence Weschler, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences
2007
Fiction: Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Non-Fiction: Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present
Poetry: Mary Jo Bang, Elegy
Criticism: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
2008
Fiction: Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Non-Fiction: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
Poetry: (1) Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light (2) August Kleinzahler, Sleeping it Off in Rapid City
Criticism: Seth Lerer, Children's Literature: A Readers' History: Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter
2009
Fiction: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Non-Fiction: Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Poetry: Rae Armantrout, Versed
Criticism: Eula Biss, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays
2010
Fiction: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Non-Fiction: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Poetry: C. D. Wright, One With Others
Criticism: Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
2011
Fiction: Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories
Non-Fiction: Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
Poetry: Laura Kasischke, Space, In Chains
Criticism: Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
2012
Fiction: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Non-Fiction: Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
Poetry: D. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys
Criticism: Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
2013
Fiction: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Non-Fiction: Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Poetry: Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog
Criticism: Franco Moretti, Distant Reading
2014
Fiction: Marilynne Robinson, Lila
Non-Fiction: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
Poetry: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Criticism: Ellen Willis, Nona Willis Aronowitz, ed., The Essential Ellen Willis
2015
Fiction: Paul Beatty, The Sellout
Non-Fiction: Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic
Poetry: Ross Gay, Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude
Criticism: Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
2016
Fiction: Louise Erdrich, LaRose
Non-Fiction: Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Poetry: Ishion Hutchinson, House of Lords and Commons
Criticism: Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
2017
Fiction: Joan Silber, Improvement
Non-Fiction: Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
Poetry: Layli Long Soldier, Whereas
Criticism: Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
2018
Fiction: Anna Burns, Milkman
Non-Fiction: Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Poetry: Ada Limón, The Carrying
Criticism: Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays
2019
Fiction: Edwidge Danticat, Everything Inside
Non-Fiction: Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Poetry: Morgan Parker, Magical Negro
Criticism: Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval
2020
Fiction: Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet
Non-Fiction: Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
Poetry: Francine J. Harris, Here Is the Sweet Hand
Criticism: Nicole R. Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
2021
Fiction: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Non-Fiction: Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Poetry: Diane Seuss, Frank: Sonnets
Criticism: Melissa Febos, Girlhood
2022
Fiction: Ling Ma, Bliss Montage
Non-Fiction: Isaac Butler, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act
Poetry: Cynthia Cruz, Hotel Oblivion
Criticism: Timothy Bewes, Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age
2023
TBD March 2024