The National Book Critics Circle, a professional organization composed of 600 book critics and reviewers from across the country, recently announced the finalists for this year's book awards. The winners in each category—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, criticism, and biography/autobiography—will be named on March 4.
The Finalists in Poetry
Carolyn Forché for Blue Hour (HarperCollins)
Tony Hoagland for What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf)
Venus Khoury-Ghata for She Says (Graywolf)
Susan Stewart for Columbarium (University of Chicago)
Mary Szybist for Granted (Alice James Books)
The Finalists in Fiction
Monica Ali for Brick Lane (Scribner)
Edward P. Jones for The Known World (Amistad/HarperCollins)
Caryl Phillips for A Distant Shore (Knopf)
Richard Powers for The Time of Our Singing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Tobias Wolff for Old School (Knopf)
In addition, the organization's Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Studs Terkel.
