NBCC's Debut Award to Marra, As Nominees Are Named

Publishers Lunch

The National Book Critics Circle is giving their first-event John Leonard Prize for a debut work to Anthony Marra for A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. 

Katherine Powers is receiving their annual Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and author and translator Rolando Hinojosa-Smith is honored with their Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

Their nominations across five categories look a lot like our consensus Best of the Best of 2013 lists (which include critics picks):

Fiction
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
Someone, Alice McDermott
The Infatuations, Javier Marias

Autobiography
Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala
The Book of My Lives, Aleksandar Hemon
The Faray Nearby, Rebecca Solnit
Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward
Farewell, Fred Voodoo, Amy Wilentz

Nonfiction
Whitey Bulger, Kevin Cullen and Shirley Murphy
Five Days at Memorial, Sheri Fink
Thank You for Your Service, David Finkel
The Unwinding, George Packer
Going Clear, Lawrence Wright

Jonathan Franzen's The Kraus Project is nominated in the criticism category. Winners will be named March 13

In other awards news, The Story Prize announced their nominees, with the winner to be named March 5:

Archangel, Andrea Barrett (W.W. Norton)
Bobcat, Rebecca Lee (Algonquin Books)
Tenth of December, George Saunders (Random House)

Stacy Schiff is the recipient of the 2014 BIO Award, given by the Biographers International Organization to a colleague who has "made a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of the genre."