Here are the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Awards finalists

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its 2022 awards.

The winner of each of the six categories — autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry — will be announced March 23.

Also to be revealed that evening: the winner of the John Leonard Prize for first book and the first-ever winner of the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize.

Previous notable winners include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Americanah and Anna Burns for Milkman; you can browse all past winners on the NBCC's website.

Autobiography 

• Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes, written by Jazmina Barrera and translated by Christina McSweeney 

• Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu

• A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast, written by Dorthe Nors and translated by Caroline Waight 

• Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan by Darryl Pinckney

• The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Biography 

• G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

• The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

• Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans

• Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman

• Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs

Criticism 

• Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv

• Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age by Timothy Bewes

• Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative by Peter Brooks

• Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

• When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold, written by Alia Trabucco Zerán and translated by Sophie Hughes

Fiction 

• Dr. No by Percival Everett

• A New Name: Septology VI-VII, written by Jon Fosse and translated by Damion Searls

• All the Lovers in the Night, written by Mieko Kawakami and translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd 

• Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma

• The Furrows: An Elegy by Namwali Serpell

Nonfiction

• The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler

• Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

• Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between by Joseph Osmundson

• Fen, Bog, & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx

• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

Poetry 

• Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha

• Hotel Oblivion by Cynthia Cruz

• Hello I Must Be Going by David Hernandez

• banana [ ] by Paul Hlava Ceballos

• Milkweed Smithereens by Bernadette Mayer

John Leonard Prize 

• The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

• If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

• The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

• Brother Alive by Zain Khalid

• Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton

• Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

• The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara

Gregg Barrios Prize

• Grey Bees, written by Andrey Kurkov and translated by Boris Dralyuk

• The Books of Jacob, written by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Jennifer Croft

• You Can Be the Last Leaf, written by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat and translated by Fady Joudah

• When I Sing, Mountains Dance, written by Irene Solà and translated by Mara Faye Lethem

• Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes, written by Jazmina Barrera and translated by Christina McSweeney 

• Kibogo, written by Scholastique Mukasonga and translated by Mark Polizzotti

Related posts 

• Congrats to the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award winners! 

• Winners of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards