National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography

The National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography, established in 2005, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English." ^[1] Awards are presented annually to books published in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Between 1983 and 2004, the award was presented jointly with biography.

Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They do consider "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories." ^[2]

The judges are the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely "professional book review editors and book reviewers." ^[3] Winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March. ^[2]

Recipients

National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography winners and finalists

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1983	Joyce Johnson	Minor Characters	Winner
1984	Joseph Frank	Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859	Winner
1985	Leon Edel	Henry James: A Life	Winner
1986	Arnold Rampersad	The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941	Winner
1987	Donald R. Howard	Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World	Winner
1988	Richard Ellmann	Oscar Wilde	Winner
1989	Geoffrey C. Ward	A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt	Winner
1990	Robert A. Caro	Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II	Winner
1991	Philip Roth	Patrimony: A True Story	Winner
1992	Carol Brightman	Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World	Winner
1993	Edmund White	Genet	Winner
1994	Mikal Gilmore	Shot in the Heart	Winner
1995	Robert Polito	Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson	Winner
1996	Frank McCourt	Angela's Ashes	Winner
1997	James Tobin	Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II	Winner
1998	Sylvia Nasar	A Beautiful Mind	Winner
1999	Henry Wiencek	The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White	Winner
2000	Herbert P. Bix	Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan	Winner
2001	Adam Sisman	Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr.Johnson	Winner
2002	Janet Browne	Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II	Winner
2003	William Taubman	Khrushchev: The Man and His Era	Winner
2004	Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan	De Kooning: An American Master	Winner
2005	Francine du Plessix Gray	Them: A Memoir of Parents	Winner	[4]
2006	Daniel Mendelsohn	The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million	Winner
2007	Edwidge Danticat	Brother, I'm Dying	Winner	[5] [6] [7]
	Joshua Clark	Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone	Finalist	[8]
	Anna Politkovskaya	Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia
	Joyce Carol Oates	The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982
	Sara Paretsky	Writing in an Age of Silence
2008	Ariel Sabar	My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq	Winner	[9]
	Honor Moore	The Bishop's Daughter	Finalist	[10] [11]
	Andrew X. Pham	The Eaves of Heaven
	Helene Cooper	The House on Sugar Beach
	Rick Bass	Why I Came West
2009	Diana Athill	Somewhere Towards the End	Winner	[12] [13] [14]
	Edmund White	City Boy	Finalist	[12]
	Kati Marton	Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America
	Mary Karr	Lit
	Debra Gwartney	Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
2010	Darin Strauss	Half a Life	Winner	[15] [16]
	Kai Bird	Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978	Finalist	[17]
	Rahna Reiko Rizzuto	Hiroshima in the Morning
	Christopher Hitchens	Hitch-22: A Memoir
	Patti Smith	Just Kids
	David Dow	The Autobiography of an Execution
2011	Mira Bartók	The Memory Palace	Winner	[18] [19]
	Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts	Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America	Finalist	[20] [21] [19]
	Luis J. Rodriguez	It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing
	Diane Ackerman	One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing
	Deb Olin Unferth	Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War
2012	Leanne Shapton	Swimming Studies	Winner	[22] [23]
	Anthony Shadid	House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East	Finalist	[24] [25] [22]
	Ngugi wa Thiong’o	In the House of the Interpreter
	Maureen N. McLane	My Poets
	Reyna Grande	The Distance Between Us
2013	Amy Wilentz	Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti	Winner	[26] [27]
	Jesmyn Ward	Men We Reaped	Finalist	[28] [29]
	Aleksandar Hemon	The Book of My Lives
	Rebecca Solnit	The Faraway Nearby
	Sonali Deraniyagala	Wave
2014	Roz Chast	Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?	Winner	[30] [31]
	Gary Shteyngart	Little Failure	Finalist	[32] [33]
	Lacy M. Johnson	The Other Side
	Blake Bailey	The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait
	Meline Toumani	There Was and There Was Not
2015	Margo Jefferson	Negroland: A Memoir	Winner	[34]
	George Hodgman	Bettyville	Finalist	[35]
	Helen Macdonald	H is for Hawk
	Elizabeth Alexander	The Light of the World
	Vivian Gornick	The Odd Woman and the City
2016	Hope Jahren	Lab Girl	Winner	[36]
	Jenny Diski	In Gratitude	Finalist	[37]
	Marion Coutts	The Iceberg
	Hisham Matar	The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
	Kao Kalia Yang	The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father
2017	Xiaolu Guo	Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China	Winner	[38] [39]
	Henry Marsh	Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon	Finalist	[40] [41]
	Roxane Gay	Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
	Thi Bui	The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
	Ludmilla Petrushevskaya	The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia
2018	Nora Krug	Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home	Winner	[42] [43] [44] [45]
	Nicole Chung	All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir	Finalist	[42]
	Tara Westover	Educated: A Memoir
	Nell Painter	Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over
	Richard Beard	The Day That Went Missing: A Family's Story
	Rigoberto Gonzalez	What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood
2019	Chanel Miller	Know My Name: A Memoir	Winner	[46] [47]
	Ronan Farrow	Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators	Finalist	[48]
	Laura Cumming	Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child
	Mira Jacob	Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
	Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman	Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir
2020	Cathy Park Hong	Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning	Winner	[49] [50] [51]
	Riva Lehrer	Golem Girl	Finalist	[52]
	Alia Volz	Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco
	Wayétu Moore	The Dragons, The Giant, The Women
	Shayla Lawson	This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
2021	Jeremy Atherton Lin	Gay Bar: Why We Went Out	Winner	[53] [54]
	Rodrigo Garcia	A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha	Finalist	[55] [56] [57]
	Doireann Ní Ghríofa	A Ghost in the Throat
	Hanif Abdurraqib	A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
	Albert Samaha	Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes
2022	Hua Hsu	Stay True: A Memoir	Winner	[58]
	Jazmina Barrera	Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes	Finalist	[59]
	Dorthe Nors	A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast
	Darryl Pinckney	Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan
	Ingrid Rojas Contreras	The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir
2023	Safiya Sinclair	How to Say Babylon: A Memoir	Winner	[60]
	Susan Kiyo Ito	I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir	Finalist	[61]
	David Mas Masumoto	Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm
	Ahmed Naji	Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison
	Matthew Zapruder	Story of a Poem: A Memoir
2024	Alexei Navalny (trans. Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel)	Patriot: A Memoir	Winner	[62] [63]
	Zito Madu	The Minotaur at Calle Lanza	Finalist	[64]
	Manjula Martin	The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History
	Erika Morillo	Mother Archive: A Dominican Family Memoir
	Wei Tchou	Little Seed

See also

• Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
• John Leonard Prize
• National Book Critics Circle Awards
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
• Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing

References

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2. "Frequently Asked Questions". National Book Critics Circle. Archived from the original on January 24, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2022.
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9. "2008". National Book Critics Circle. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
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55. Bancroft, Colette (January 21, 2022). "National Book Critics Circle announces awards finalists". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
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58. "Awards: NBCC Winners; Dylan Thomas Shortlist". Shelf Awareness . March 24, 2023. Archived from the original on March 27, 2023. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
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External links

• Official website