Living Canon

National Book Critics Circle Award 1997: Complete list of winners

The 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award winners represent a striking moment in American letters, when the year’s most celebrated literary critics converged on an unusually diverse range of achievements. James Tobin’s Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II earned recognition in both the autobiography and biography categories, a testament to its power as both personal narrative and historical reckoning. Meanwhile, Penelope Fitzgerald’s luminous The Blue Flower claimed the fiction prize, cementing her reputation as one of the most intellectually rigorous novelists of her generation, while Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down won nonfiction honors for its unflinching examination of cultural collision in American medicine.

What made 1997 particularly memorable was the breadth of the circle’s taste. Mario Vargas Llosa’s Making Waves captured the criticism award, bringing the perspectives of a celebrated international author to literary discourse, while Charles Wright’s Black Zodiac triumphed in poetry—a collection that would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize the following year. The National Book Critics Circle Award, one of the most prestigious honors in American publishing, demonstrated once again why it commands such respect among serious readers: its winners span genres and sensibilities, united only by an uncompromising standard of excellence.

The complete list of 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award winners across all categories follows below:

Autobiography

Biography

Criticism

Fiction

Nonfiction

Poetry