National Book Critics Circle Award

National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote the finest books and reviews published in English.

The main awards fall into six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Awards are not given to titles that have been previously published in English, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They also do not "consider cookbooks, self help books (including inspirational literature), reference books, picture books or children's books."Titles are, however, eligible to be awarded if they are "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories above." The NBCC membership elects a 24 person all volunteer Board of Directors to nominate and judge books for the awards and guide all day-to-day activities.

The 2010 winners were announced March 10, 2011.(winners in bold)

Fiction

Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf)

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (Farrar, Straus And Giroux)

David Grossman, To The End Of The Land (Knopf)

Hans Keilson, Comedy In A Minor Key (Farrar, Straus And Giroux)

Paul Murray, Skippy Dies (Faber & Faber)

Nonfiction

Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (Spiegel & Grau)


S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American (Scribner)

Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (Random
)

Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner
)

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Random)

Criticism

Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (Harper
)

Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West (Yale University Press)


Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance (University of Chicago Press)

Ander Monson, Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf)

Biography

Sarah Bakewell, How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne (Other Press)

Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography (Random House)

Yunte Huang, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History (Norton)

Thomas Powers, The Killing Of Crazy Horse (Knopf)

Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends (Doubleday)

Autobiography

Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Scribner)

David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution (Twelve)

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (Twelve)

Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning (Feminst Press)

Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco)

Darin Strauss, Half a Life (McSweeney’s)

Poetry

Anne Carson, Nox (New Directions)

Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press) 


Terrance Hayes, Lighthead (Penguin Poets)

Kay Ryan, The Best of It (Grove)

C.D. Wright, One With Others (Copper Canyon)