The National Book Critics Circle announced the the winners of the 2011 NBCC Awards tonight (March 8).

The winner for autobiography was Mira Bartok for "The Memory Palace," a memoir and exploration of the nature of memory, based around Bartok's life with a schizophrenic mother  and her memory loss following a serious accident.

The winner for biography was John Gaddis for "George F. Kennan: An American Life," the story of the U.S. statesman and diplomat known as the "father of containment" for his work on U.S.-Soviet policy.

2011 National Book Critics Circle Awards

  • Kathryn Schulz was presented the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
  • Robert Silvers of the New York Review of Books was presented the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award

Autobiography

  • "The Memory Palace" by Mira Bartok
  • "Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America" by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
  • "It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love" by Luis J. Rodriguez
  • "One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke" by Diane Ackerman
  • "Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War" by Deb Olin Unferth

Biography

  • "George F. Kennan: An American Life" by John Lewis Gaddis
  • "Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China" by Ezra F. Vogel
  • "Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life" by Paul Hendrickson
  • "Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution" by Mary Gabriel
  • "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention" by Manning Marable

Fiction

  • "Binocular Vision" by Edith Pearlman
  • "Open City" by Teju Cole
  • "Stone Arabia" by Dana Spiotta
  • "The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • "The Stranger’s Child" by Alan Hollinghurst

Nonfiction

  • "Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War" by Maya Jasanoff
  • "A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War" by Amanda Foreman
  • "Pulphead: Essays" by John Jeremiah Sullivan
  • "The Information" by James Gleick
  • "To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion" by Adam Hochschild

Criticism

  • "Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews" by Geoff Dyer
  • "Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything" by David Bellos
  • "Karaoke Culture" by Dubravka Ugresic
  • "Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music" by Ellen Willis
  • "The Ecstasy of Influence" by Jonathan Lethem

Poetry

  • "Space, In Chains" by Laura Kasischke
  • "Core Samples from the World" by Forrest Gander
  • "Devotions" by Bruce Smith
  • "Kingdom Animalia" by Aracelis Girmay
  • "The Chameleon Couch" by Yusef Komunyakaa