Poetry Prize and Nominees for National Book Critics Circle and Edgar Allan Poe Awards Are Announced

The Oscar nominations got all the attention, but Tuesday was a busy day for literary honors as well. Yale University awarded the $165,000 Bollingen Prize in American Poetry to Charles Bernstein, while the Mystery Writers of America announced their nominees for the annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards and the National Book Critics Circle named the finalists for their prestigious NBCC Awards.

The Bollingen Prize, administered through the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, is awarded every two years to recognize a recent book or a lifetime body of work. In choosing Bernstein as the 51st winner, this year’s judges — Ange Mlinko, Claudia Rankine and Evie Shockley — said that throughout his career Bernstein “has shaped and questioned, defined and dismantled ideas and assumptions in order to reveal poetry’s widest and most profound capabilities.”

They singled out his most recent book, “Near/Miss,” published in October by the University of Chicago Press, for particular praise.

“I am overwhelmed at being in the company of my fellow Bollingen winners,” Bernstein said in a statement. “How great that ‘Near/Miss’ has been so warmly welcomed into the world.”

Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards include 31 books across six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Notably, poet Terrance Hayes was nominated in two different categories for two different books. His collection “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin” is a poetry finalist, and his book “To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation With the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight” is a finalist for criticism.

The 24 directors of the National Book Critics Circle typically name five finalists per category, but they cited an especially strong year for autobiography in naming six to that category this year. Those nominees include a graphic memoir (Nora Krug’s “Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home”) and Tara Westover’s “Educated,” which The New York Times Book Review selected as one of its 10 Best Books of 2018.

The organization’s lifetime achievement award will go to independent publisher Arte Público Press, which specializes in Hispanic literature. The John Leonard Prize, for the best first book in any genre, will be awarded to Tommy Orange for his debut novel, “There There” (also one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books), which centers on a Native American gathering in Oakland, California. NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan will receive a citation for excellence in reviewing.

The awards will be presented March 14 at the New School in New York City.

The Mystery Writers of America will present the Edgar Awards on April 25 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. Prizes are awarded in 11 categories covering crime fiction, nonfiction and television. Finalists for best novel include Walter Mosley’s “Down the River Unto the Sea” and Lawrence Osborne’s “Only to Sleep,” while Delia Owens is a finalist in the first novel category for “Where the Crawdads Sing” and Leila Slimani was nominated in the paperback category for another of the Book Review’s 10 Best, “The Perfect Nanny.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.