On Monday night the National Book Critics Circle announced select awards along with nominations in 6 categories. National Book Award winner Phil Klay adds the NBCC’s John Leonard Award for outstanding first book for REDEPLOYMENT. Toni Morrison, 83, is the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and Alexandra Schwartz at the New Yorker is the winner of their award for excellence in reviewing.
In their broader nominations, NBA fiction nominees Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman) and Marilynne Robinson (Lila) are in contention again, as are NBA nonfiction nominees Roz Chast (for autobiography, for Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?) and John Lahr (for biography, for his book on Tennessee Williams).
In an NBCC first, NBA poetry nominee Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric is nominated in different categories: poetry and criticism. The three other fiction nominees are:
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings
Lily King, Euphoria
Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea
The critics snubbed Anthony Doerr’s book of the year, however. Complete lists of nominees can be found here; The winners will be named March 12.