National Book Critics Circle Award 2013: Complete list of winners
The 2013 National Book Critics Circle Awards showcased the remarkable range of contemporary literature, honoring six works that tackled everything from postcolonial identity to natural disaster, from literary theory to biographical portraiture. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah took the fiction prize, a sprawling novel that follows a Nigerian woman navigating race, immigration, and belonging in America—a book that would go on to become a cultural touchstone for its unflinching examination of identity politics. Meanwhile, Frank Bidart’s Metaphysical Dog claimed the poetry award, continuing the legendary poet’s exploration of desire and mortality with characteristic intensity.
Beyond fiction and poetry, the 2013 awards recognized essential nonfiction voices addressing urgent realities. Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial won nonfiction honors for its devastating account of triage decisions made in a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina, while Amy Wilentz’s Farewell, Fred Voodoo secured the autobiography category with her intimate, politically engaged meditation on Haiti and American complicity. The criticism prize went to Franco Moretti for Distant Reading, a work that fundamentally challenged how literary scholars approach texts, and Leo Damrosch’s comprehensive Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World won biography, bringing the 18th-century satirist to vivid life.
What emerges from this year’s National Book Critics Circle Award selections is a cohort of works deeply engaged with history, identity, and the formal possibilities of literature itself. Here are the complete 2013 winners:
Autobiography
Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti by Amy Wilentz
Biography
Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch
Criticism
Distant Reading by Franco Moretti
Fiction
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nonfiction
Poetry
Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart