Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky

Photo: Martyna Starosta

Forward 50 members Roz Chast and Gary Shteyngart are among the 30 nominees for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Awards.

The award, given to books in the areas of autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry, is given by the book critics and book review editors of the National Book Critics Circle. This year’s winners will be announced March 12.

Other nominees include the late Ellen Willis for “The Essential Ellen Willis,” (see the Forward’s review here) and Marilynne Robinson for “Lila” (read our piece on Robinson’s trip to Israel here).

Check out the full list of nominees below.

Autobiography:

Blake Bailey, “The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait” (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Roz Chast, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” (Bloomsbury)

Lacy M. Johnson, “The Other Side” (Tin House)

Gary Shteyngart, “Little Failure” (Random House)

Meline Toumani, “There Was and There Was Not” (Metropolitan Books)

Biography:

Ezra Greenspan, “William Wells Brown” (W.W. Norton & Co.)

S.C. Gwynne, “Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson” (Scribner)

John Lahr, “Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh” (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Miriam Pawel, “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez” (Bloomsbury)

Criticism:

Eula Biss, “On Immunity: An Inoculation” (Graywolf Press)

Vikram Chandra, “Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty” (Graywolf Press)

Claudia Rankine, “Citizen: An American Lyric” (Graywolf Press)

Lynne Tillman, “What Would Lynne Tillman Do?” (Red Lemonade)

Ellen Willis, “The Essential Ellen Willis,” edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz (University of Minnesota Press)

Fiction:

Rabih Alameddine, “An Unnecessary Woman” (Grove Press)

Marlon James, “A Brief History of Seven Killings” (Riverhead Books)

Lily King, “Euphoria” (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Chang-rae Lee, “On Such a Full Sea” (Riverhead Books)

Marilynne Robinson, “Lila” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction:

David Brion Davis, “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation” (Alfred A. Knopf)

Peter Finn and Petra Couvee, “The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book” (Pantheon)

Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” (Henry Holt & Co.)

Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)

Hector Tobar, “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Poetry:

Saeed Jones, “Prelude to Bruise” (Coffee House Press)

Willie Perdomo, “The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon” (Penguin Books)

Claudia Rankine, “Citizen: An American Lyric” (Graywolf Press)

Christian Wiman, “Once in the West” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Jake Adam York, “Abide” (Southern Illinois University Press)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing:

Alexandra Schwartz

Finalists:

Charles Finch

Barbara K. Fischer

Benjamin Moser

Lisa Russ Spaar

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award:

Toni Morrison

John Leonard Prize:

Phil Klay, Redeployment (Penguin Press)

Drawing The Last Chapter from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo.

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