National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists

Posted on January 20, 2015

The National Book Critics Circle announced 30 finalists for the best books of 2014. There are 30 finalists in in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, general nonfiction, and poetry.

There are five finalists in the fiction category: Rabih Alameddine for An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press), Marlon James for A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Books), Lily King for Euphoria (Atlantic Monthly Press), Chang-rae Lee for On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books), and Marilynne Robinson for Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

In the Poetry category, the five finalists are Saeed Jones for Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press), Willie Perdomo for The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Books), Claudia Rankine for Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press), Christian Wiman for Once in the West (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Jake Adam York for Abide (Southern Illinois University Press).

Toni Morrison, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, will be awarded the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. The awards are given by a jury of working book review editors and critics. This year's awards will be presented at a ceremony that is open to the public on March 12, 2015 at the New School in New York City.