March 25, 2021, 8:30pm
This evening, during a virtual event, the National Book Critics Circle announced the recipients of its 2020 book awards, spread across six categories, and also awarded the previously announced Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (to the Feminist Press) and Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing (to Jo Livingstone). The winners were chosen from a shortlist of finalists by the 24-member board of directors, which consists of editors and critics from across the country. The full list of winners is below:
Autobiography
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World)
Biography
Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner)
Criticism
Nicole Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Harvard Univ. Press)
Fiction
Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet (Knopf)
Nonfiction
Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Harvard Univ. Press)
Poetry
francine j. harris, Here Is The Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The John Leonard Prize
Raven Leilani, Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Jo Livingstone
The Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
The Feminist Press