The National Book Critics Circle announced the recipients of its book awards for works published in 2019 on Thursday evening.
The prestigious literary awards—for the best English-language books published in the U.S. in six categories (fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, poetry and criticism)—are usually presented at the NBCC’s annual gala. This year, due to COVID-19, the awards were announced online instead; the gala, which was to have been held March 12 in New York City, has been postponed until September.
This year’s nonfiction recipient was Patrick Radden Keefe for Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which was also a 2019 Kirkus Prize finalist. Edwidge Danticat won the fiction award for her story collection Everything Inside.
Chanel Miller was awarded the autobiography prize for Know My Name: A Memoir, an account of her sexual assault at Stanford University and its aftermath. The award for biography went to Josh Levin for his examination of the welfare queen myth, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.
Morgan Parker received the award for poetry for Magical Negro. Saidiya Hartman won the criticism prize for Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval.
The John Leonard Prize, which recognizes the best first book in any genre, was presented to Sara M. Broom’s memoir, The Yellow House. Naomi Shihab Nye won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.
Katy Waldman, a staff writer at the New Yorker, won the 2019 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, given to an NBCC member for exceptional critical work.
The NBCC announced it would honor the winners and finalists at a gala in New York City on Sept. 12.
Amy Reiter is a writer in Brooklyn, New York.
