Diaz and Danticat Among 2007 NBCC Winners

By Craig Morgan Teicher -- Publishers Weekly, 3/6/2008 4:35:00 PM

In his opening remarks, National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman described "enormous changes in the critical landscape," citing the proliferation of online venues for book criticism and shrinking space for reviews in print publications, as forces with which readers, writers and critics have had to reckon this past year.  Nonetheless, the 2007 NBCC awards ceremony, held at the New School's Tishman Auditorium Thursday night, celebrated the endurance of literature and literacy in America.  Books already highly praised, such as Junot Diaz's long awaited second book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Edwidge Danticat's memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, recieved awards.  Other winners, like Mary Jo Bang's poetry collection, Elegy, received significant recognition for the first time. 

Here is the complete list of winners in all categories:

Fiction: Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead)

General Nonfiction: Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday)

Autobiography: Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying (Knopf)

Biography: Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer (Yale)

Criticism: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Poetry: Mary Jo Bang, Elegy (Graywolf Press)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Sam Anderson, book critic for New York Magazine

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: Emile Buchwald, founding publisher of Milkweed Editions

Photo by Nancy Crampton