The National Book Critics Circle Awards, awarded for the first time in 1981, are a set of literary awards giving recognition to America’s finest published writers in five distinct categories. Presented annually by The National Book Critics Circle (www.bookcritics.org), these winners are selected by a coalition of nearly 700 active book reviewers. We have listed the winners for the last ten years.

2003
Fiction: The Known World, Edward P. Jones
General Non Fiction: Sons of Mississippi , Paul Hendrickson
Biography/Autobiography: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, William Taubman
Poetry: Columbarium, Susan Stewart
Criticism: River of Shadows : Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West

2002
Fiction: Atonement, Ian McEwan
General Nonfiction: “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power
Biography/Autobiography: Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol.II
Poetry: Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, B.H. Fairchild
Criticism: Tests of Time, William H. Gass

2001
Fiction: Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
General Nonfiction: Double Fold:Libraries and the Assault on Paper, Nicholson Baker
Biography/Autobiography: Boswellis Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson, Adam Sisman
Poetry: Saving Lives, Albert Goldbarth
Criticism: The War Against ClichÉ: Essays and Reviews 1071-2000, Martin Amis

2000
Fiction: Being Dead, Jim Crace
General Nonfiction: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Ted Conover
Biography/Autobiography: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix
Poetry: Carolina Ghost Woods, Judy Jordan
Criticism: Quarrel & Quandary, Cynthia Ozick

1999
Fiction: Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
General Nonfiction: Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior, Jonathan Weiner
Biography/Autobiography: The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, Henry Wiencek
Poetry: Ordinary Words, Ruth Stone
Criticism: Selected Non-Fictions, Jorge Louis Borges

1998
Fiction: The Love of a Good Woman, Alice Munro
General Nonfiction: We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch
Biography/Autobiography: A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar
Poetry: The Bird Catcher, Marie Ponsot
Criticism: Visions of Jazz: The First Century, Gary Giddons

1997
Fiction: The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
General Nonfiction: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman
Biography/Autobiography: Ernie Pyle's War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II, James E. Tobin
Poetry: Black Zodiac, Charles Wright
Criticism: Making Waves, Mario Vargas Llosa

1996
Fiction: Women in Their Beds, Gina Berriault
General Nonfiction: Bad Land, Jonathan Raban
Biography/Autobiography: Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Poetry: Sun Under Wood, Robert Hass
Criticism: Finding a Form, William Gass

1995
Fiction: Mrs. Ted Bliss, Stanley Elkin
General Nonfiction: A Civil Action, Jonathon Harr
Biography/Autobiography: Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, Robert Polito
Poetry: Time and Money, William Matthews
Criticism: The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, Robert Darnton

1994
Fiction: The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
General Nonfiction: The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, Lynn H. Nicholas
Biography/Autobiography: Shot in the Heart, Mikal Gilmore
Poetry: Rider, Mark Rudman
Criticism: The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature and Modern American Culture, Gerald Early

1993
Fiction: A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines
General Nonfiction: The Land Where the Blues Began, Alan Lomax
Biography/Autobiography: Genet, Edmund White
Poetry: My Alexandria, Mark Doty
Criticism: Opera in America: A Cultural History, John Dizikes

1992
Fiction: All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
General Nonfiction: Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean
Biography/Autobiography: Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World, Carol Brightman
Poetry: Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991, Hayden Carruth
Criticism: Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Garry Wills

1991
Fiction: A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
General Nonfiction: Backlash: The Undeclared War Against America Women, Susan Faludi
Biography/Autobiography: Patrimony: A True Story, Philip Roth
Poetry: Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology, Albert Goldbarth
Criticism: Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, Lawrence L. Langer

Other Awards