Four Columbia Authors Named Finalists for National Book Critics Circle Awards; Cynthia Cruz Takes Home Award
Update: March 27, 2023
Former Adjunct Assistant Professor Cynthia Cruz has won the National Books Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Hotel Oblivion (Four Way Books, 2022).
In this fragmented collection, Cruz challenges the tenets of capitalist society, attempting to escape it through “engagement with the death drive,” struggling to reconnect with her original self through destruction and rebirth. Cruz writes of the search for meaning in a consumerist existence, saying, “In the afternoon, on Saturday,/ I bought a pale blue dress from Humana/ and walked alone, home, in it,/ through the parades of my emptiness.”
Congratulations for Cruz poured in on Twitter, with tweets from everyone from fellow poet Ada Limón and last year’s NBCC Award winner in Criticism Melissa Febos to the MacDowell Colony.
Cruz, along with the other award winners, was recognized at a ceremony at the New School on March 23, 2023—the first in-person awards ceremony hosted by the National Book Critics Circle Awards in four years.
Hotel Oblivion is available to purchase here.
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Original: February 3, 2023
Four Columbia authors are among the finalists for the The National Book Critics Circle’s annual awards honoring the best books of the year.
Considered one of the most prestigious awards in American literature, the National Book Critics Circle Awards were founded in 1974 and are the only prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book review editors.
“We’re an all-volunteer organization with a mission that’s simple and sweet: honor outstanding writing and foster a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature,” said NBCC President Megan Labrise.
Columbia authors are finalists in four categories, with Professor and School of Journalism alumna Margo Jefferson (JRN '71) nominated in Criticism for her memoir, Constructing a Nervous System: a Memoir (Pantheon, 2022).
In this follow-up to the NBCC Award-winning Negroland, Jefferson fuses memoir and criticism by exploding her “self” and recombining the pieces, calling on her parents and her grandmother, as well as artists, athletes, and celebrities from Ike Turner to Bing Crosby to create a collage of voices, sounds, and images which, enable Jefferson to reexamine herself and the world.
Constructing a Nervous System was published to exceptional praise. It was named a best book of the year by many media outlets, including The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, Vulture, Buzzfeed, and Publishers Weekly, as well as The Washington Post, which said, “Shoving aside old ideas about memoir as mere biography… [Jefferson] exudes charisma on the page with a voice that commands attention, drawing us into her thoughts about particular artists she admired in youth and then saw anew with the perspective of age.”
Constructing a Nervous System is available to purchase here.
Adjunct Assistant Professor Joseph Osmundson is nominated in Nonfiction for Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between (Norton, 2022).
Osmundson, an expert in microbiology, uses his knowledge and experience to help readers understand the structure and mechanics of viruses like HIV and COVID-19, marrying queer theory, molecular science, and social criticism to examine how our responses to these viruses transform the way we live in the world.
The New York Times Book Review said, “The task of following [Osmundson’s] leaps and swerves, while occasionally challenging, is its own reward, a chance to collaborate with a mind at work.”
Virology is available for purchase here.
Adjunct Assistant Professor Cynthia Cruz is nominated in Poetry for Hotel Oblivion (Four Way, 2022).
In this fragmented collection, Cruz challenges the tenets of capitalist society, attempting to escape it through “engagement with the death drive,” struggling to reconnect with her original self through destruction and rebirth. Cruz writes of the search for meaning in a consumerist existence, saying, “In the afternoon, on Saturday,/ I bought a pale blue dress from Humana/ and walked alone, home, in it,/ through the parades of my emptiness.”
Poet and historian G. C. Waldrep calls the collection, “a harrowing noir, hypnotic in the same way the dull thud of the pulse, from inside pain, can hypnotize.”
Hotel Oblivion is available to purchase here.
Alumna Jessamine Chan ’12 is nominated for the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book for her novel, The School for Good Mothers (Simon & Schuster, 2022).
Nominations for the John Leonard Prize are solicited from the voting members of the NBCC, and finalists for the Prize are the titles (of any genre) that received the most nominations. A panel of NBCC member-volunteers read the finalists and select the winner. Previous winning titles include Luster by Raven Leilani and Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.
The School for Good Mothers follows Frida, a mother who is trying to do her best in unfortunate circumstances. Things go from bad to worse as a Big Brother-type organization swoops down on her, wielding oppressive power and challenging her competence as a mother.
In addition to being a New York Times bestseller, the novel was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and selected as one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022.
The School for Good Mothers is available to purchase here.
The awards will be presented on March 23 at the New School in New York City, in a ceremony that will be free and open to the public.