The NBCC criteria (taken from the NBCC web site):
Each year the National Book Critics Circle selects awards in six categories: Fiction, General Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism. Members of the Board of Directors nominate books. Each book that is championed by a board member is placed on a master list, from which the finalists (and ultimately the winners) are selected. ... Books published in English (including translations) in the United States with pub dates within 2010 will be considered. For more details read: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/how_we_pick_our_awards/
Fiction
Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (Knopf)
Biography
Sarah Egan's How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Other Press)
Criticism
Clare Cavanagh's Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West (Yale University Press)
Poetry
C.D. Wright's One with Others: [a little book of her days] (Copper Canyon)
General Nonfiction
Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Random House)
Autobiography
Darin Strauss' Half a Life (McSweeney's)
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Dalkey Archive Press
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Parul Sehgal
