National Book Critics Circle Award Nominees

The finalists for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced at their blog, Critical Mass. Sorry, no links to reviews.

The National Book Critics Circle also announced that the winner of this year of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is the Pen American Center. Winner of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing went to Ron Charles.

Fiction Finalists
Roberto Bolaño, 2666. Farrar, Straus
Marilynne Robinson, Home, Farrar, Straus
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project, Riverhead
M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, West Virginia University Press
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge, Random

Poetry Finalists
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar, Strauss)
Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light (University of Arizona Press)
Devin Johnston, Sources (Turtle Point Press)
Pierre Martory (trans. John Ashbery), The Landscapist (Sheep Meadow Press)
Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press)

Criticism Finalists
Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard. Metropolitan Books
Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life. Boston Review/MIT
Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. Doubleday
Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry, University of Michigan Press
Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, University of Chicago Press

Biography Finalists
Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Amistad.
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family In An American Century. Penguin Press.
Patrick. French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul. Knopf.
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Norton
Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Knopf

Autobiography Finalists
Rick Bass, Why I Came West. Houghton Mifflin.
Helene Cooper, The House On Sugar Beach, Simon and Schuster
Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter. WW Norton
Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves Of Heaven. Harmony Books.
Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Algonquin

Nonfiction Finalists
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War, Knopf
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War, Knopf
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Doubleday
Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, Atlantic
George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776. Oxford University Press

Balakian Finalists
Michael Antman
Kathryn Harrison
Laila Lalami
Todd Shy

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974 at the Algonquin, is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization consisting of some 700 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns. It is managed by a 24-member all-volunteer board of directors. For more information, please contact National Book Critics Circle president Jane Ciabattari at janeciab@gmail.com or go to http://www.bookcritics.org.

Tags: books, awards, National Book Critics Circle, Award Nominees, 2008