March 20, 2025, 9:08pm
Tonight, in a ceremony at the New School in New York City, the National Book Critics Circle announced the winners of its 2024 awards, narrowed down from a long list of finalists in six categories: Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Winners in each of the NBCC’s special categories—the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the NBCC Service Award, the John Leonard Prize for the best first book, the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Toni Morrison Achievement Award—were also celebrated.
Here are the 2024 winners:
Autobiography
Alexei Navalny, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel, Patriot: A Memoir (Knopf)
Biography
Cynthia Carr, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Criticism
Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House)
Fiction
Hisham Matar, My Friends (Random House)
Nonfiction
Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space (Avid Reader)
Poetry
Anne Carson, Wrong Norma (New Directions)
Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize
Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Penguin Classics)
John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
NBCC Service Award
Lori Lynn Turner
The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Lauren Michele Jackson
Toni Morrison Achievement Award
Third World Press
The Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Sandra Cisneros