The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization (501(c) 3) with nearly 600 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, a set of literary awards presented every March.
The organization was founded April 1974 in New York City by "John Leonard, Nona Balakian, and Ivan Sandrof intending to extend the Algonquin round table to a national conversation". It was formally chartered October 1974 as a New York state non-profit corporation and the Advisory Board voted in November to establish annual literary awards. In the first newsletter three months later, President Ivan Sandrof proclaimed the primary purpose "to improve and maintain the standards of literary criticism in an era of diminishing and deteriorating values". At that time there were 140 members, with outreach to freelance critics planned for that year.
NBCC first presented its Awards in January 1976 to books published during 1975 in four categories. Only active review editors and reviewers may be voting members; they elect the 24 Directors who formally make nominations and alone make final selections each year.
A fifth award category for books (Autobiography/Biography) was added for 1983 and divided in two for 2005. Since 2005 there are eight awards. Six National Book Critics Circle Awards recognize "best books" published in the United States during the preceding year in six categories: fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, biography, criticism, and poetry. Annually "the most accomplished reviewer" among its members is recognized by the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing (from 1991). The NBCC also recognizes no more than one person or organization for "exceptional contributions to books" with the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (from 1981 under more than one name). All eight awards are officially dated in the preceding year.
As a professional association, NBCC also works to improve the quality of reviews and provides services to its members.
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“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer ... writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
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“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)