The eNotes Blog National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistsAnnounced

National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistsAnnounced This past Saturday, the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced.   Among the finalists are   Johnathan Franzen for Freedom   and Siddhartha Mukharjee for The Emperor of  All Maladies. Along with the Pulitzer Prize (2010 winner, Tinkers by Paul Harding) and the Man Booker  Prize (2010 winner, The Finkler Question by Harold Jacobson), the NBCC Award is among the most coveted of literary prizes. The first NBCC award was given in 1974 at the historic Algonquin Hotel in New York City, where literatures illuminati  gathered in the 1920s. The goal of the NBCC is to extend that intimate conversation of the Round Table into a national conversation. There are six categories for which the prize is awarded: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The winners are selected by critics, of course. There is an additional award called the Balakian which honors working critics. Here is a full list of 2010s finalist nominees: Fiction: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Knopf) Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (FSG) To the End of the Land by David Grossman (Knopf) Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson (FSG) Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Faber   Faber) Nonfiction: Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick (Random House) Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne (Scribner) Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans (Random House) The Emporer of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner) The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House) Autobiography: Half A Life by Darin Strauss (McSweeneys) Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco) Crossing Mandelbaum Gate by Kai Bird (Scribner) Autobiography of An Execution by David Dow (Hachette) Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve) Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna  Reiko  Rizzuto (Feminist Press) Biography: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Questions and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell (Other Press) The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography by Selina Hastings Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yuente Huang The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends by Tom Segev Criticism: The Posessed by Elif  Batuman (FSG) The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle (HarperCollins) Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West by Clare Cavanagh (Yale) The Cruel Radience: Photography and  Political Violence by Susan Linfield (Univ. of Chicago) Vanishing Point by Ander Monson (Graywolf) Poetry: One With Others by C.D. Wright (Copper Canyon) Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions) The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber (Princeton) Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (Penguin) The Best of It by Kay Ryan (Grove)