The National Book Critics Circle revealed the winners of its awards Thursday evening at a ceremony held in New York. The prizes are bestowed annually by a jury of critics and book review editors.

“The very concept of the free press is under attack. And yet here we are, defiantly carrying on the NBCC’s mission: to seek the right for our members, and for critics around the world, to think freely. To never be afraid to voice their opinions, even in these turbulent times,” NBCC President Adam Dalva said in his opening remarks, according to a press release.

The fiction award went to Nobel laureate Han Kang for We Do Not Part, which was translated from Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. Fiction committee chair Heather Scott Partington called the book a “work of blinding melancholy, bleak weather, and murmuring syntax.”

Karen Hao won the nonfiction award for Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which nonfiction committee chair Christoph Irmscher described as a “gripping tale in which there are no heroes, not even tragic ones.”

Arundhati Roy won the autobiography award for Mother Mary Comes to Me. The memoir was also a finalist for the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and recently shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.

The biography prize was awarded to Alex Green for A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle To Care for America’s Disabled. Quinn Slobodian claimed the criticism award for Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. Kevin Young took the poetry honors for Night Watch. And the Barrios Book in Translation Prize went to author Neige Sinno and translator Natasha Lehrer for Sad Tiger.

Nicholas Boggs won the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book for Baldwin: A Love Story. The book was also a finalist for the 2025 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.

The NBCC Service Award went to Elizabeth Taylor. No, not that Elizabeth Taylor. The honoree is a longtime literary editor of the Chicago Tribune who has also chaired several Pulitzer juries. Taylor is the first sitting NBCC board member to receive the award.

The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, given to an NBCC member for “exceptional critical work,” was awarded to editor and writer Rhoda Feng. Journalist and historian Frances FitzGerald was the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award and was honored by committee chair Jacob M. Appel for never being “afraid to speak truth to power or to challenge the received wisdom.”

The Toni Morrison Achievement Award, which “honors institutions that have made significant contributions to book culture,” was awarded to both NPR and PBS. “At a time when some question the value of public, service-minded media, we salute PBS and NPR for all you have done for both book culture and American democracy,” Appel said, according to a press release.

Amy Reiter is a writer in Brooklyn.