Tommy Orange. Photo by Elena Seibert.
Two books published by Minneapolis' Graywolf Press, one by Milkweed Editions and one by the University of Wisconsin Press are among the finalists for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards. For the second year in a row, a memoir told as a graphic novel is among the finalists. And poet Terrance Hayes has two books among the finalists -- one in poetry and one in criticism.
NBCC board members deliberated most of Saturday before choosing the finalists.The finalists were announced today, as were winners in three special categories. The winner of the John Leonard Prize for first book will go to Tommy Orange for "There There." Winner of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Maureen Corrigan. And the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award will go to Arte Público Press.
Here are the finalists--five each in fiction, nonfiction, biography, poetry and criticism, and six in autobiography.
Autobiography
Beard, Richard, "The Day That Went Missing" (Little, Brown)
Chung, Nicole "All You Can Ever Know" (Catapult)
Gonzalez, Rigoberto "What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth" (University of Wisconsin Press)
Krug, Nora "Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home" (Scribner)
Painter, Nell "Old in Art School" (Counterpoint)
Westover, Tara, "Educated" (Random House)
Biography
Bonanos, Christopher. "Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous." (Henry Holt & Company)
Leavy, Jane. The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created." (Harper/HarperCollins)
Brown, Craig. Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Huang, Yunte. "Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History." (Liveright)
Lamster, Mark "The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century." (Little, Brown)
Criticism
Robert Christgau, "Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2007." (Duke University Press)
Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.( W.W. Norton)
Terrance Hayes, "To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight." (Wave)
Lacy Johnson, "The Reckonings" (Scribner)
Zadie Smith, "Feel Free" (Penguin Press)
Fiction
Burns, Anna. Milkman (Graywolf)
Chamoiseau, Patrick. Trans. Linda Coverdale. Slave Old Man (The New Press)
Kushner, Rachel. The Mars Room (Scribner)
Johnson, Denis. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Random House)
Urrea, Luis Alberto. The House of Broken Angels (Little, Brown)
Nonfiction
Cantu, Francisco, "The Line Becomes a River" (Riverhead Books)
Coll, Steve, "Directorate S: The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan" (Penguin Press)
Lukianoff, Greg and Haidt, Jonathan. "The Coddling of the American Mind" (Penguin Press)
Winkler, Adam, "We the Corporations" (Liveright)
Wright, Lawrence, "God Save Texas" (A.A. Knopf)
Poetry
Limón, Ada. The Carrying. (Milkweed)
Hayes, Terrance. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. (Penguin Random House)
Meitner, Erika. Holy Moly Carry Me. (Boa)
Seuss, Diane. Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. (Graywolf)
Zagajewski, Adam. Asymmetry. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The winners will be announced at a free ceremony on March 14 at the New School in New York City. The event will be followed by a reception and party.
