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Critics Circle names award winners Monday
Web posted on:
Monday, March 08, 1999 6:54:44 PM
(CNN) -- Book critics get their say Monday night when they announce their picks for the best book of the past year.
The National Book Critics Circle Award will be announced Monday night in New York. The awards come in five categories -- fiction, general nonfiction, biography and autobiography, poetry and criticism.
The winners will be announced as critics gather in New York for their annual convention, where the finalists are sorted out and the Critics Circle chooses its board of directors.
Finalists include two acclaimed short story writers: Lorrie Moore, for "Birds of America,"
and the Canadian author Alice Munro, for "The Love of a Good Woman." Also cited were three novelists: Michael Cunningham, for "The Hours," David Gates, for "Preston Falls," and Lynne Tillman, for "No Lease on Life."
Not nominated was "Tom Wolfe for "A Man in Full". Other prominent authors not making the cut include National Book Award winner Alice McDermott, whose novel "Charming Billy" has been a surprise best seller, and Robert Stone, whose "Damascus Gate" was also a National Book Award runner-up.
The NBCC did cite at least one well known writer: Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is among the finalists in the criticism category, cited for "The Sounds of Poetry." David Remnick, who last year succeeded Tina Brown as editor of The New Yorker, was nominated in the biography/autobiography category for his book on Muhammad Ali, "King of the World."
Finalists were announced January 26. There is no cash prize for awards.
The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, is a not-for-profit organization of book editors and critics with 400 members nationwide.
The awards may have a limited impact commercially, but are considered important in literary circles, said Charles Wright, whose "Black Zodiac" won last year's prize for poetry.
"It's a nice thing to have won. It's sifted out through a lot of people, a lot of nominators," said Wright, who teaches at the University of Virginia. "It, the National Book Award and the Pulitzer are the three big annual prizes, and it's nice to have one of them."
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