# National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography

The National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography, established in 2005, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English." Awards are presented annually to books published in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Between 1983 and 2004, the award was presented jointly with biography.
Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They do consider "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories."
The judges are the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely "professional book review editors and book reviewers." Winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March.

## Recipients

National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1983 | Joyce Johnson | Minor Characters | Winner |
| 1984 | Joseph Frank | Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 | Winner |
| 1985 | Leon Edel | Henry James: A Life | Winner |
| 1986 | Arnold Rampersad | The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941 | Winner |
| 1987 | Donald R. Howard | Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World | Winner |
| 1988 | Richard Ellmann | Oscar Wilde | Winner |
| 1989 | Geoffrey C. Ward | A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt | Winner |
| 1990 | Robert A. Caro | Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II | Winner |
| 1991 | Philip Roth | Patrimony: A True Story | Winner |
| 1992 | Carol Brightman | Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World | Winner |
| 1993 | Edmund White | Genet | Winner |
| 1994 | Mikal Gilmore | Shot in the Heart | Winner |
| 1995 | Robert Polito | Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson | Winner |
| 1996 | Frank McCourt | Angela's Ashes | Winner |
| 1997 | James Tobin | Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II | Winner |
| 1998 | Sylvia Nasar | A Beautiful Mind | Winner |
| 1999 | Henry Wiencek | The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White | Winner |
| 2000 | Herbert P. Bix | Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan | Winner |
| 2001 | Adam Sisman | Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr.Johnson | Winner |
| 2002 | Janet Browne | Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II | Winner |
| 2003 | William Taubman | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | Winner |
| 2004 | Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan | De Kooning: An American Master | Winner |
| 2005 | Francine du Plessix Gray | Them: A Memoir of Parents | Winner |
| 2006 | Daniel Mendelsohn | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million | Winner |
| 2007 | Edwidge Danticat | Brother, I'm Dying | Winner |
| 2007 | Joshua Clark | Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone | Finalist |
| 2007 | Anna Politkovskaya | Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia | Finalist |
| 2007 | Joyce Carol Oates | The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 | Finalist |
| 2007 | Sara Paretsky | Writing in an Age of Silence | Finalist |
| 2008 | Ariel Sabar | My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq | Winner |
| 2008 | Honor Moore | The Bishop's Daughter | Finalist |
| 2008 | Andrew X. Pham | The Eaves of Heaven | Finalist |
| 2008 | Helene Cooper | The House on Sugar Beach | Finalist |
| 2008 | Rick Bass | Why I Came West | Finalist |
| 2009 | Diana Athill | Somewhere Towards the End | Winner |
| 2009 | Edmund White | City Boy | Finalist |
| 2009 | Kati Marton | Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America | Finalist |
| 2009 | Mary Karr | Lit | Finalist |
| 2009 | Debra Gwartney | Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love | Finalist |
| 2010 | Darin Strauss | Half a Life | Winner |
| 2010 | Kai Bird | Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 | Finalist |
| 2010 | Rahna Reiko Rizzuto | Hiroshima in the Morning | Finalist |
| 2010 | Christopher Hitchens | Hitch-22: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2010 | Patti Smith | Just Kids | Finalist |
| 2010 | David Dow | The Autobiography of an Execution | Finalist |
| 2011 | Mira Bartók | The Memory Palace | Winner |
| 2011 | Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts | Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America | Finalist |
| 2011 | Luis J. Rodriguez | It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing | Finalist |
| 2011 | Diane Ackerman | One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing | Finalist |
| 2011 | Deb Olin Unferth | Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War | Finalist |
| 2012 | Leanne Shapton | Swimming Studies | Winner |
| 2012 | Anthony Shadid | House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East | Finalist |
| 2012 | Ngugi wa Thiong’o | In the House of the Interpreter | Finalist |
| 2012 | Maureen N. McLane | My Poets | Finalist |
| 2012 | Reyna Grande | The Distance Between Us | Finalist |
| 2013 | Amy Wilentz | Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti | Winner |
| 2013 | Jesmyn Ward | Men We Reaped | Finalist |
| 2013 | Aleksandar Hemon | The Book of My Lives | Finalist |
| 2013 | Rebecca Solnit | The Faraway Nearby | Finalist |
| 2013 | Sonali Deraniyagala | Wave | Finalist |
| 2014 | Roz Chast | Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? | Winner |
| 2014 | Gary Shteyngart | Little Failure | Finalist |
| 2014 | Lacy M. Johnson | The Other Side | Finalist |
| 2014 | Blake Bailey | The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait | Finalist |
| 2014 | Meline Toumani | There Was and There Was Not | Finalist |
| 2015 | Margo Jefferson | Negroland: A Memoir | Winner |
| 2015 | George Hodgman | Bettyville | Finalist |
| 2015 | Helen Macdonald | H is for Hawk | Finalist |
| 2015 | Elizabeth Alexander | The Light of the World | Finalist |
| 2015 | Vivian Gornick | The Odd Woman and the City | Finalist |
| 2016 | Hope Jahren | Lab Girl | Winner |
| 2016 | Jenny Diski | In Gratitude | Finalist |
| 2016 | Marion Coutts | The Iceberg | Finalist |
| 2016 | Hisham Matar | The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between | Finalist |
| 2016 | Kao Kalia Yang | The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father | Finalist |
| 2017 | Xiaolu Guo | Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China | Winner |
| 2017 | Henry Marsh | Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon | Finalist |
| 2017 | Roxane Gay | Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body | Finalist |
| 2017 | Thi Bui | The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir | Finalist |
| 2017 | Ludmilla Petrushevskaya | The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia | Finalist |
| 2018 | Nora Krug | Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home | Winner |
| 2018 | Nicole Chung | All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2018 | Tara Westover | Educated: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2018 | Nell Painter | Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over | Finalist |
| 2018 | Richard Beard | The Day That Went Missing: A Family's Story | Finalist |
| 2018 | Rigoberto Gonzalez | What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood | Finalist |
| 2019 | Chanel Miller | Know My Name: A Memoir | Winner |
| 2019 | Ronan Farrow | Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators | Finalist |
| 2019 | Laura Cumming | Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child | Finalist |
| 2019 | Mira Jacob | Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations | Finalist |
| 2019 | Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman | Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2020 | Cathy Park Hong | Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning | Winner |
| 2020 | Riva Lehrer | Golem Girl | Finalist |
| 2020 | Alia Volz | Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco | Finalist |
| 2020 | Wayétu Moore | The Dragons, The Giant, The Women | Finalist |
| 2020 | Shayla Lawson | This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope | Finalist |
| 2021 | Jeremy Atherton Lin | Gay Bar: Why We Went Out | Winner |
| 2021 | Rodrigo Garcia | A Farewell To Gabo And Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha | Finalist |
| 2021 | Doireann Ní Ghríofa | A Ghost in the Throat | Finalist |
| 2021 | Hanif Abdurraqib | A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance | Finalist |
| 2021 | Albert Samaha | Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes | Finalist |
| 2022 | Hua Hsu | Stay True: A Memoir | Winner |
| 2022 | Jazmina Barrera | Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes | Finalist |
| 2022 | Dorthe Nors | A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast | Finalist |
| 2022 | Darryl Pinckney | Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan | Finalist |
| 2022 | Ingrid Rojas Contreras | The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2023 | Safiya Sinclair | How to Say Babylon: A Memoir | Winner |
| 2023 | Susan Kiyo Ito | I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2023 | David Mas Masumoto | Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm | Finalist |
| 2023 | Ahmed Naji | Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison | Finalist |
| 2023 | Matthew Zapruder | Story of a Poem: A Memoir | Finalist |