The National Book Critics Circle Awards: Every Winner Since 1975
Since 1976 the people who review books for a living have given their own prizes, for the best books of the year before: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and criticism at first, then biography and autobiography too. There are no outside judges. The board of the National Book Critics Circle reads the books and votes. In fifty years that has added up to 270 winners, from Ragtime to a novel about a massacre on the island of Jeju.
By Lisanne Swart · 270 winners since 1975 · Six categories · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 22 September 2026
The twelve most recent · 2024 and 2025
Click a spine to jump to that book below.
BooksPublished in 2026
FinalistsEarly 2027
WinnersMarch 2027
The next awards are for books published in 2026. The last three rounds of winners were announced in March, and this page is updated when the finalists and winners are out.
Quick answer
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are American book prizes chosen by critics: the board of the National Book Critics Circle, a group of reviewers and book editors, votes on the best books published in the United States the year before. There are six categories: fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, criticism and poetry. The first awards were given in January 1976, for books from 1975, and there have been 270 winners. The latest, for books from 2025, include Han Kang’s We Do Not Part for fiction and Karen Hao’s Empire of AI for nonfiction.
Quick facts about the National Book Critics Circle Award
Founded
1974; the first awards were given in January 1976, for books published in 1975
Chosen by
The board of the National Book Critics Circle: 24 book critics and editors, eight elected each year
Categories
Fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, criticism and poetry
Who can win
Books published in the United States that year, including translations, story and essay collections
Year on this page
The year the books were published; the awards themselves follow in March of the next year
Winners
270 across the six categories, 1975 to 2025
Won most often
Three times each: E. L. Doctorow (all fiction), John Updike, Robert A. Caro and William H. Gass
Shared awards
Twice: nonfiction for 1978 and poetry for 2008
Latest winners
For books from 2025, announced on 26 March 2026 in New York
Also given
The John Leonard Prize for a first book, the Nona Balakian Citation for reviewing, and the Ivan Sandrof Award for a lifetime
How this page chooses
Two jobs, kept apart. The timeline further down lists all 270 winners, year by year and category by category, from 1975 to 2025 — facts only.
The twelve with a full entry are the winners of the two most recent years, 2024 and 2025, in all six categories. There is no ranking in it. Under each one is a line of plain fact about the book or the author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
The twelve most recent winners, 2024 and 2025
The six winners for books from 2024, then the six for books from 2025. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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2024
FictionLondon, 1984
My Friends
Hisham Matar
Khaled, a Libyan student in London, is shot outside the Libyan embassy in 1984, when someone inside opens fire on a protest against Gaddafi. He cannot go home. The novel follows him and two friends, Mustafa and Hosam, over the decades of exile that follow.
Matar won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for his memoir The Return.
The space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1986, killing all seven on board. The book follows the crew, the engineers who warned about the seals, and the decisions that led to the launch.
The life of Candy Darling, the trans actress who came from Long Island to Andy Warhol’s Factory, appeared in his films and died in 1974, at twenty-nine.
Carr’s earlier book Fire in the Belly is a biography of the artist David Wojnarowicz.
The Russian opposition leader’s memoir, from his childhood to his return to Russia in 2021 and his years in prison, written partly in his cell. It was published after his death in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024.
Navalny began writing it in 2020, while recovering from being poisoned with Novichok.
A book about basketball and about Ohio: Columbus, where Abdurraqib grew up, and Akron, where LeBron James did. It is set out like a game, in quarters, and is as much about grief and home as about the sport.
Abdurraqib was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.
Twenty-five pieces of poetry and prose, with images Carson made herself, about subjects that do not connect: Joseph Conrad, Guantánamo, Flaubert, snow, her father. She has said that is why she called them wrong.
It was also a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry.
Translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Han Kang
A writer travels through heavy snow to her friend’s house on the island of Jeju, to look after a bird while the friend is in hospital. In the house she finds the history of the friend’s family and of the massacres on Jeju after 1948.
Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.
A history of OpenAI and Sam Altman, and of what building ever larger AI models has cost: in money, in power and water, and for the workers around the world who label the data the models learn from.
Hao reported on artificial intelligence for MIT Technology Review before writing the book.
Walter E. Fernald ran the oldest public institution in the United States for intellectually disabled children from 1887. He helped start special education, took part in the eugenics movement, and later turned against locking people away. Green follows him through all three.
How part of the far right grew out of free-market thinking: the followers of the economist Friedrich Hayek who moved from markets to arguments about race, gold and IQ.
Slobodian’s earlier books include Globalists and Crack-Up Capitalism.
Poems about loss, private and shared, that draw on American history, among them the lives of Millie and Christine McCoy, conjoined twins born into slavery, and on Dante.
Kevin Young is the poetry editor of The New Yorker.
The National Book Critics Circle was set up in 1974 by book reviewers and editors, and gave its first awards in January 1976, for the books of 1975. It has no outside jury. The 24 members of its board, critics and book editors who serve three years each, read the books and choose the finalists and the winners themselves.
That is why the year on this page is the year the books came out. The winners for books from 2025 were announced in New York on 26 March 2026.
From four categories to six
The first awards had four categories: fiction, general nonfiction, poetry and criticism. Biographies and memoirs competed as nonfiction, which is how The Woman Warrior won in 1976 and the first volume of Robert Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson in 1982.
From 1983 there was one award for biography and autobiography together, and from 2005 two separate ones. Translations count too: W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Han Kang’s We Do Not Part all won for fiction.
Frequently asked questions about the National Book Critics Circle Award
What is the National Book Critics Circle Award?
A set of American book awards chosen by critics. The board of the National Book Critics Circle votes on the best books published in the United States the year before, in six categories: fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, criticism and poetry.
Who won the National Book Critics Circle Awards for 2025?
Han Kang for We Do Not Part (fiction), Karen Hao for Empire of AI (nonfiction), Alex Green for A Perfect Turmoil (biography), Arundhati Roy for Mother Mary Comes to Me (autobiography), Quinn Slobodian for Hayek’s Bastards (criticism) and Kevin Young for Night Watch (poetry). They were announced on 26 March 2026.
Who chooses the winners?
The board of the National Book Critics Circle: 24 book critics and editors, eight of whom are elected each year. There is no separate jury.
When are the next winners announced?
The next awards are for books published in 2026. The last three rounds of winners were announced in March of the following year.
Who has won the most National Book Critics Circle Awards?
E. L. Doctorow won the fiction award three times, for Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and The March. Robert A. Caro, John Updike and William H. Gass also won three times each, across categories.
Can translated books win?
Yes. Books are eligible if they were published in the United States that year and not before in English, so translations count. W. G. Sebald, Roberto Bolaño and Han Kang have all won for fiction.
Is it the same as the National Book Award?
No. The National Book Awards are given by the National Book Foundation with separate juries; the National Book Critics Circle Awards are chosen by the critics’ own board.
Where do I start with the winners?
With the twelve most recent, which have a full entry on this page. For other American prizes, my page on the Pulitzer Prize winners has every winner since 1980.
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