Local Author Finalist for Book Award

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its book awards for the publishing year 2009, and local writer Debra Gwartney is on the list!The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974 at the Algonquin, is a nonprofit organization consisting of some 600 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common problems. The organization is managed by a 24-member all-volunteer board of directors.

Along with the finalists listed below, the NBCC also awarded Joyce Carol Oates the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award and Joan Acocella the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Here are the finalists, by category:

Autobiography:

• Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End
• Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
• Mary Karr, Lit
• Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America
• Edmund White, City Boy

Biography:

• Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life
• Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
• Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
• Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone
• Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

Fiction:

• Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage
• Marlon James, The Book of Night Women
• Michelle Huneven, Blame
• Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
• Jayne Anne Philips, Lark and Termite

Nonfiction:

• Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History
• Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
• Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
• Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains
  Wiliam T. Vollmann, Imperial

Poetry:

• Rae Armantrout, Versed
• Louise Gluck, A Village Life
• D.A. Powell, Chronic
• Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008
• Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents

Criticism:

• Eula Biss, Notes from No Man's Land
• Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry
• Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
• David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
• Greg Miner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music