National Book Critics Circle Award

Every year, the National Book Critics Circle of over 700 book reviewers from all parts of the country present awards for the finest books published in English. Categories include: Fiction, General Nonfiction, Biography/Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.

2020 Winners:

Fiction Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down — a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.	General Nonfiction Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner Island on Fire is a dramatic day-by-day account of this transformative uprising. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner goes back to the primary sources to tell the intimate story of the men and women who tasted liberty for a few brief weeks. He memorably evokes the sights and sounds of the Caribbean in the 1830s, provides the first full portrait of its enigmatic leader Samuel Sharpe, and gives us a poignant glimpse of the dreams of the many Jamaicans who died for liberty.
Poetry Here Is the Sweet Hand by Francine J. Harris The poems in Here Is the Sweet Hand explore solitude as a way of seeing. In particular, the speakers in Francine J. Harris's third collection explore the mystique, and myth, of female loneliness as it relates to blackness, aging, landscape and artistic tradition.	Criticism Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Nicole R. Fleetwood Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author's own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions — including solitary confinement — these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison walls. Their bold works, many of which are being published for the first time in this volume, have opened new possibilities in American art.
Biography Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Josh Levin Immersive and fascinating, Stranger in the Shogun's City is a revelatory work of history, layered with rich detail and delivered with beautiful prose, about the life of a woman, a city, and a culture.	Autobiography Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche — and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.