Doctorow and Ashbery Help National Book Critics Circle Celebrate 35th Year

by Barbara Hoffert | Jul-15-2009

After 35 Years, Now What! Doctorow and Ashbery Help National Book Critics Circle Celebrate 35th Year at WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space

For 35 years, the National Book Critics Circle has honored the best in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, autobiography, biography, and criticism. The NBCC also confers the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, given for the best critical work of the year by an NBCC member. Both are named after founding members who gathered at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to expand their literary conversation to a national level.

What comes next?

On September 12, 2009, at 7 p.m. E.L. Doctorow and John Ashbery, winners of the first NBCC Awards in fiction and poetry (for Ragtime and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, respectively), NBCC President Jane Ciabattari, past presidents John Freeman, Herb Leibowitz, Jack Miles, Rebecca Miller, Carlin Romano, Elizabeth Taylor, and Art Winslow, and dozens of current and past board members will gather at WNYC’s new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in New York City to talk about 35 years of the NBCC legacy and to predict the future of literary criticism and book culture in the digital age. The discussion will be posted on Critical Mass, the NBCC board blog, along with blog posts from dozens of former NBCC board members and members and other witnesses to the NBCC over the years.

A full listing of NBCC award winners can be found here.

For more information: http://www.bookcritics.org or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

What: Now What! The National Book Critics Circle at 35
When: September 12, 2009, 7:00 PM
Where: Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton Street (at Varick Street)

This event is a co-presentation of the National Book Critics Circle and WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space.