Over the weekend the National Book Critics Circle revealed the contenders for its 2012 book awards, the only literary awards judged solely by book critics.
The finalists in poetry are:
Forrest Gander for Core Samples from the World (New Directions)
Aracelis Girmay for Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)
Laura Kasischke for Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)
Yusef Komunyakaa for The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Bruce Smith for Devotions (University of Chicago Press), which was a finalist for last year's National Book Award
In fiction, the finalists are:
Teju Cole for his novel, Open City (Random House)
Jeffrey Eugenides for his novel The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Alan Hollinghurst for his novel The Stranger’s Child (Knopf)
Edith Pearlman for her story collection Binocular Vision (Lookout Books), a finalist for the National Book Award
Dana Spiotta for her novel Stone Arabia (Scribner)
In memoir, the finalists are:
Diane Ackerman for One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing (Norton)
Mira Bartók for The Memory Palace (Free Press)
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts for Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown)
Luis J. Rodríguez for It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)
Deb Olin Unferth for Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)
Among the finalists in nonfiction are John Jeremiah Sullivan, the Paris Review's southern editor and a contributing editor of Harper's, nominated for his essay collection, Pulphead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In the criticism category, novelist Jonathan Lethem got a nod for The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday).
The winners will be announced on March 8 at a ceremony at the New School University in New York City.