Christchurch City Libraries lists literary prize winners and links to catalogue searches, but we may not hold copies of all titles mentioned.
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), founded in 1974, consists of nearly 600 active book critics, authors, literary bloggers, book publishing personnel, and student members. The NBCC Awards honour the best literature published in the United States in a number of categories.
See the other National Book Critics Circle Awards category winners and all the other literary prize winners we list.
2023
- Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression Tina Post Winner
- The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century Nicholas Dames
- Creep: Accusations and Confessions Myriam Gurba
- Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World Naomi Klein
- Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques Grace E. Lavery
2022
- Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age Timothy Bewes Winner
- Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us Rachel Aviv
- Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative Peter Brooks
- Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir Margo Jefferson
- When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold Alia Trabucco Zerán, trans. by Sophie Hughes
2021
- Girlhood Melissa Febos Winner
- Why Didn't You Do What You Were Told? Jenny Diski
- Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul? Jesse McCarthy
- Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon Mark McGurl
- The Right To Sex Amia Srinivasan
2020
- Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration Nicole Fleetwood Winner
- Stranger Faces Namwali Serpell
- Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country Cristina Rivera Garza
- Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader Vivian Gornick
- Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America Wendy A. Woloson
2019
- Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman Winner
- Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib
- Essays One by Lydia Davis
- Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 by Peter Schjeldahl
- Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
2018
- Feel Free: Essays Zadie Smith Winner
- Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017 Robert Christgau
- Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics Stephen Greenblatt (also published at Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power)
- To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight Terrance Hayes
- The Reckonings: Essays Lacy M. Johnson
2017
- You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages Carina Chocano Winner
- The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story Edwidge Danticat
- Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History Camille T. Dungy
- Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions Valeria Luiselli
- Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News Kevin Young
2016
- Carol Anderson Winner
- Against Everything: Essays Mark Greif
- Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic Alice Kaplan
- The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Olivia Laing
- Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live Peter Orner
2015
- The Argonauts Maggie Nelson Winner
- Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake Leo Damrosch
- On Elizabeth Bishop Colm Tóibín
- The Nearest Thing to Life James Wood
2014
- The essential Ellen Willis edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz Winner
- On immunity: an innoculation Eula Biss
- Geek sublime: the beauty of code, the code of beauty Vikram Chandra
- Citizen: an American lyric Claudia Rankine
- What would Lynne Tillman do? Lynne Tillman
2013
- Distant reading Franco Moretti Winner
- White girls Hilton Als
- Confronting the classics: traditions, adventures and innovations Mary Beard
- The Kraus Project: essays by Karl Kraus Jonathan Franzen with Paul Reiter and Daniel Kehlmann
- Forty-one false starts: essays on artists and writers Janet Malcolm
2012
- Stranger magic: charmed states and the Arabian Nights Marina Warner Winner
- Reinventing Bach Paul Elie
- Waiting for the barbarians: essays from the classics to pop culture Daniel Mendelsohn
- Madness, rack, and honey Mary Ruefle
- The grey album: on the blackness of blackness Kevin Young
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
- Everything that rises: a book of convergences Lawrence Weschler
2005
- The undiscovered country: poetry in the age of tin William Logan
2004
2003
- River of shadows Rebecca Solnit
2002
- Tests of time William H. Gass
2001
2000
- Quarrel and quandary Cynthia Ozick
1999
- Selected non-fictions Jorge Luis Borges
1998
- Visions of jazz Gary Giddins
1997
- Making waves Mario Vargas Llosa
1996
- Finding a form William Gass
1995
- The forbidden best-sellers of pre-Revolution France Robert Darnton
1994
- The culture of bruising: essays on prizefighting, literature and modern American culture Gerald Early
1993
- Opera in America: a cultural history John Dizikes
1992
1991
- Holocaust testimonies: the ruins of memory Lawrence L. Langer