Living Canon

National Book Critics Circle Award 1981: Complete list of winners

The 1981 National Book Critics Circle Award selections represent a remarkable snapshot of American intellectual life at the turn of the decade. John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich, which claimed the fiction prize, brought readers back into the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom during the economically turbulent early 1980s—a perfect match for a year when the nation grappled with inflation and shifting cultural values. Meanwhile, Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man won in nonfiction, offering a rigorous scientific and historical dismantling of racist pseudoscience that would resonate for decades in academic and popular discourse alike.

The circle’s selections that year showcased the breadth of excellence the National Book Critics Circle Award has long recognized across genres. Virgil Thomson’s A Virgil Thomson Reader captured the criticism prize with its collection of essays and reviews from one of America’s most influential cultural commentators, while A.R. Ammons’s meditative poetry collection A Coast of Trees proved that the poetry category could celebrate both accessibility and formal sophistication. Each of these books endured precisely because they addressed universal human concerns—aging, mortality, how we understand ourselves and our place in the world—even as they engaged with the specific preoccupations of their moment.

Below, discover the complete list of 1981 National Book Critics Circle Award winners across all categories, along with additional context on each recipient’s achievement.

Criticism

Fiction

Nonfiction

Poetry