National Book Critics Circle Awards

US National Book Critics Circle Awards 2024 finalists announced

The US National Book Critics Circle Awards 2024 finalists were announced in New York, USA on Thursday, January 23, 2025.

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) celebrates the best books published in English in Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism in the United States since 1974. Finalists are nominated, evaluated, and selected by a 24-member jury of critics and editors from some of the country’s leading print and online publications, and critics whose works appear in these publications. Previous winners include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013), Nicole R. Fleetwood, francine j. harris, Raven Leilani (2020), Safiya Sinclair and Jonny Steinberg (2023).

The 2024 edition kicked off with the award’s longlists being announced from December 16 – 19, 2024. The finalists in the categories as well as the John Leonard Prize and the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize finalists were revealed to the public on Thursday.

“The NBCC remains, as president Ivan Sandrof said at our first ceremony, ‘fiercely independent,’ the only literary prize selected by the critics themselves,” stated NBCC President Heather Scott Partington. “This year’s finalist list represents another collection of innovative and bold writing. These essential works break down barriers and expectations. As censorship and book bans continue, these new classics communicate indispensable truths and beg to be read. These writers and translators stand shoulder to shoulder with NBCC honorees of the past 50 years. By celebrating their work, we seek to honor the rights of all people to write and to read.”

The writers of African descent finalists are;

Fiction

  • James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)
  • My Friends, Hisham Matar (Random House)

Biography

  • Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, Tiya Miles (Penguin Press)

Poetry

  • Instructions for the Lovers, Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat)
  • Scattered Snows, to the North, Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction

  • We’re Alone, Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf)

Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

  • Traces of Enayat, Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger (Transit),

John Leonard Prize

  • Great Expectations, Vinson Cunningham (Hogarth)

Criticism

  • Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us, Legacy Russell (Verso)
  • The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War, Jesse McCarthy (University of Chicago)
  • There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York, USA ceremony on March 20, 2025.

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