The National Book Critics Circle hosts a party tonight at 6:30 p.m., Sat. Jan 21 in Manhattan at Artists Space, 38 Greene St. at the corner of Grand, to announce the finalists for the NBCC 2011 Awards for fiction, biography. autobiography, criticism, general nonfiction and poetry. In addition, the winners of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing will be announced. The annual awards are for “best literature published in English.”
Presenters include last year’s fiction winner Jennifer Egan (fiction), Darin Strauss (autobiography) and Parul Sehgal (Nona Balakian Citation), as well as 2010 finalists Siddhartha Mukherjee (nonfiction), Elif Batuman (criticism), Kathleen Graber (poetry) and Yunte Huang (biography).
As always it should be an intriguing list. The first two big 2011 fiction prizes have gone to Jesmyn Ward for Salvage the Bones (National Book Award) and Julian Barnes for Sense of an Ending (Man Booker Prize). The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Tomas Tranströmer, the Swedish poet. The Pulitzer Prize winners and nominated finalists for books published in 2011 in the United States will be announced on April 16.
The NBCC event is free and open to the public. Complimentary drinks and drinks and hors d’oeuvre will be served.
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