The nbcc. Weve been honored to host this awards ceremony right here in this auditorium. The series of interviews that i have posted. They are posted on our blog and on the nbcc website. Thirty interviews over a threeweek time is a huge job and one that could not be done without that many editors who gave their help. Thank you to the Board Members. A few more thanks. In the huge thank you. I wonder if we can give up round of applause for the board. They make mention this also. With the enterprise. I think today they have it preaching to the choir. I think they will need that. [applause]. We can also mention that. I dont want that. Mention other things the arts and great organizations. To support them. Now its my pleasure to turn the evening over. The books editor. Its nice to see sony people here tonight. I am the president of the National Book critics circle. For the publishing year 2016. We are delighted to have you join us. With six categories fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, all of the authors who have joined us here tonight. As well as the editors and publishers agents and publicists who brought their work to our attention. The National Book critics circle is founded. Given by the critics. Unlike other National Literary awards it would come from directly nominations offered by the reviewers and book review editors. Among the extranet titles honored extraordinary titles honored by the nbcc over the deck rates Toni Morrison song solomon. James merrill the changing light. In the brief life. To name just a few. They are known to include 700 members. Many of whom are here tonight. It is also expanded to include the john leonard prize. Price. Honoring the best first book in any genre. Recognizing outstanding reviews might nbcc member. The Lifetime Achievement award. They made an extra in her contribution to the world of letters. In these and many other ways. The events that they sponsor throughout the year. We strive to build upon their example and to further their vision. We launched a new initiative to identify and nurture and support the development. Through an already hectic reward season. And other Board Members read more than 100 submissions from inspiring critics young and old. We are very proud to announce that the first class of fellows i think Zachary Graham is with us here tonight. Would you stand and give him some applause. This is the start of a great tradition for the nbcc. Tonights ceremony is a combination of months of extensive reading, discussion, arguments, counterargument online and facetoface. At the beginning of each year the 24 member board divides itself into the awarding categories in the months that followed the committees read is extensively as humanly possible in this perspective categories. After the selection of the finalists in january all 24 Board Members read every one of the 30 titles the two month long marathon and that is testimony to the high level of commitment. Earlier today we met in a classroom here at the new school and talked our way through each group of finalists. Tonight we are proud to name the recipients of the awards i would like to ask all of the Board Members of the nbcc to stand at this point so that we might recognize them for their efforts. [applause]. The Board Members are elected to threeyear terms and several members are at the end of their term. I would just like to take a moment to recognize them individually for their work, thank you [applause]. They could not put together the free Public Events without the generosity and support of some the other people and institutions. I would like to think in particular the new school and especially the writer of directing the associate director who always makes things run so smoothly. I also would like to thank the individuals and organizations who partnered with us or supported us this year. A special thank you as well to beth parker who joined us this year to help publicize the nbcc in a very special thanks to the david barna who is up in the booth who keeps his organizations running in countless small and crucial ways. And our online vp who helps us to maintain a robust presence online through our blog, Twitter Facebook and instagram. I invite you all to toast our finalists that are benefit receptionist. On the second floor. Tickets to the reception can be purchased at the door is the only event for which we ask a donation and we greatly appreciate your support. In addition the bookstore is here tonight selling copies of the books by all of our finalists and Award Winners and we encourage you to patronize them. Now to get things started one more thing i wanted to say to people as they come up to receive their award you can come up from either side come to the podium i would just ask that after youre done stand onto the stage for a second. There are some photographers who want to shoot you. Not literally. And then our new board member is stage left he will escort you off stage left. He will shoot a series of porch strips. Its easier than it sounds. To get things started i would like to welcome dan asked to present the john leonard price. It is an incredible honor for me to be here you probably know it is given by our members for the best book of any genre. The writing of the abuse. The one i always looked for was john leonard. What i relished was the unique combination of loaning and remedy. Authority and modesty. Responsibility and generosity. He was a critic who was furious about literature but new enough not to take himself too seriously. Long before it was popular to do so they took a special interest in new and minority forces. Its an ambitious novel that will wrap its arms around the africanamerican experience of slavery. The spine of the story is a family tree. Confident debut. They grew up in the American South in huntsville alabama. She has an english degree from stanford. She writes like an angle. Angel. Its my great honor and privilege. [applause]. Congratulations. I am so grateful to be here celebrating with all of you here tonight. Thank you to the National Book critics circle for this tremendous honor. Thank you also to sue leonard into the late john leonard for championing new writers. What a privilege it is to be recognized for the john leonard award tonight. I would also like to thank my brilliant editor might fire cracker about publicist in my encouraging agent all of them believed in this book so very fiercely. In and another thank you goes to Matthew Nelson for his exquisite partnership. Finally, i would like to thank my family especially my parents who came to this country with little more than the close on their back and the children in their arms. In a time where it feels like every day immigrants and refugees are being met with the new fronts for their humanity. Im even more grateful for the sacrifices that my parents made so that i could one day stand here before all of you and accept this award. Thank you again. [applause]. Good evening. And welcome to make america read again portion of the program. It has been my privilege to serve as chair of the committee. Each year the nbcc awards them for excellence in reviewing to recognize outstanding work by one of our members. The citation is awarded the Founding Member of this organization. Since 2012 the citation comes with a thousand dollars cash prize endowed by nbcc board member yours truly. On a personal note i would like to take one minute to say that it was 50 years ago today that the book editor of a small texas daily added the title to the byline of this then 17yearold writer. Book critics rule. After careful deliberation the committee selected the following finalists for the 2016 award. Julia and klein. Leo robson. Christian lorentzen. Michelle dean could we have a hand for these wonderful writers. Thank you. This years citation goes to michelle dean. Throughout journalism and criticism appears regularly in the guardian the new republic, salon and many other distinguished publications. Originally trained as a lawyer she has been a fulltime writer 2012. Her book about women critics and intellectuals titled sharp the women who made an art of having an opinion is forthcoming from grove atlantic. Without further ado please join me in giving a warm welcome to michelle dean. [applause]. Thank you for letting me get up here and speak tonight. Im really glad to be in this company. I think i am expected to Say Something about criticism but ive actually never been big on the big claims of criticism. And i reject this whole business of drawing a line between critics and other writers no good critic i know of ever considered herself a critic as opposed to a writer. I just want to say a Little Something about that instead. Not too long ago on the internet i saw this photograph of a really small baby raccoon and it was hunched over on a road in the caption that some have given it read that when you realize you dont want to be responsible for anything anymore and you just want to nap and be small. I have arranged my life so that i see pictures of cute animals on the internet every day. Im not usually seized by them the way i was by this one. The desire to advocate to give up that is primal right now. Like everybody else alive there is a lot going on. Every day brings a fresh fear and outrage. Even though we have all of these tiny little licks of action. The petition and the marches no single one of them is going to fix what is happening. It is on the verge of something and when we look at that. We are climbing up the arc of the moral universe from our present vantage its pretty hard to see if its actually bending towards justice the weight Martin Luther king said. And its not like we want to look away for the last few years i think we all head. Brave new world of ours that started a long time before november 8 in the eight and the struggle that we find ourselves in is not a mistake in a fluke. She would point out that it came from something that has been simmering here for years. It was not a big bank and it crept into my life where we were napping. I still wish we have missed it. As i start about this a few weeks ago you know all the jokes now. It approaches nonfiction. Reading at what it what i thought about mostly was this there is so a few books like that be in publix right now. The application to this question of power many writers seem the limits of fiction the way we create it and the in the way that we inflict on others these questions may have some role in those books but theyre not usually the century central preoccupation. I would never ask a writer to be a jukebox but there is a kind of looking away going on by a lot of writers going to know better. Our own tiny kingdom. We are so often alone but it doesnt relieve us of the response ability of getting up and looking around. I am just as skeptical about the claims about criticism. But i do think there is a bottom line to writing when a writer is supposed to do is Pay Attention. A good novelist pays attention to his characters a good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. Its the only thing that guarantees as insight and its the only real weapon we have against power because you cant fight the things that you can actually see. The power they have is the power to have that. They have this enormous power. In my other writing life as a journalist i met this young woman last year who have been literally chopped for most of her life. Her name is gypsy. For her whole life. One day she realized her mother have been lied to her and with her lies she have kept two of them in this fraud. They physically wouldnt let her go. After now shes in prison and shes trying to figure out at the same time as i was reporting the story i happen to be given a book review. Who felt trapped in the existence and i will say here just because i said in print i did not like this novel. As it happened. So damning i expect that it won me this award. In the way that i yelled at him in print. But really i only wanted to remind him as i so often had to remind myself to Pay Attention. Thank you. [applause]. Hello everybody. Its been my privilege to chair the Achievement Award this year and the committee is really a Great Committee to chair because of all of the potential nominees are phenomenal. And the word honors significant and sustained contributions to literary culture. During the years of that they had been presented. Leslie siegler. Theyve been so universally acknowledged. We had been pleased to call attention to such critics. And orlando who has not yet received the recognition the lifetime contribution to him. This years recipient for Lifetime Achievement and literary culture is margaret atwood. [applause]. Tonight we honor her significant and sustained accomplishments. For her work as a novelist and a poet in a critic to the tally of more than 40 books for the influence on writers editors across canada and the globe to imagine and create into right in a world where human beings endure and survive for her writing about surviving against the forces of history and culture for her writing about surviving against personal and political assaults. For her writing about surviving attacks on civil rights women rights human rights as well as environmental degradation. And for her writing about surviving through literature with dignity and decency. For all of this and more she needs no introduction. But margaret, youre to get one anyway. They had been a literary agent since 1963. Her career began here in the city with the agency which was the first Literary Agency in the united states. Established in the 1880s. She later joined john cushman which was the American Branch of curtis brown. In 1971 she opened the Literary Agency in Greenwich Village and in 1975 she moved to bennis california taking her shop and her writers out west. Please give her a warm welcome. [applause]. Is a privilege to be here. First i want to thank the critics that have made this event and for them doing so lovingly for the writers they will make it the circle it should be writers, critics and readers and around it goes again and again. I became the literary agent 40 years ago its hard to believe that because i dont feel that. But then as you know time goes very fast. But i first discovered her in 1969. I went out to promenade and just walked back and forth and back and forth, electric, with the energy that came from those pages. I had to find her. So i went to my office and i called an editor i knew, and his him in was peter peerson. Now, in those days the phones had two lines on them. So i was on one line, dialing, when another line, the red light went on. I picked up the one with the readlight it was peter peerson. Sorry, not pearson marge get is cueing me on the name. Davidson. Peter davidson. A lot of peters. So peter said, im about to publish your publish a back by a canadian author, female, and i thought you might like to consider it. And i said, i would if the name is margaret attwood. Some he said, yes. It all began. Serendipity obviously. When i met her we were sitting across the table and i was very nervous about meeting her. Because i knew something about her. I read her novel and had read some of their poetry, but she didnt know anything about me. When you sit down the table, the first got comfortable in our chairs, she asked me, what sign are you . So i said, im a gemini. She said, both my parents are geminies. So i thought, okay. That went pretty well. Next question, can i see your palm . If you look very carefully at both palms, i dont remember what she said. Curiously, sent that you have a lot of lines. But not so long after that, after we just had general conversation, margaret said, i think we should give it a try. So it began. Published by simon simon scr but before it was published in the state these would have been 1972 debitor was if was push in canada. The publisher there was jack mclellon who opened the company and his father created the company as a publisher of bibles, so jack was a very flamboyant guy and he knew that she had won the governor generals award for circle games. Now, what happened was he invited her to a party, publishing party, at his house, and i decided to fly up from new york and go with her, and was i ever glad i did because when we arrived at his very fine house, fine part of town, there war lot of cars in a streets around it. So, in we walked, and since margaret is small in stature and i was, we were able to get through the crowd without anyone really recognizing her, put we both needed to take a breath because there were far more people than we ever could have imagined. And so we stepped into the powder room, and i remember looking at her and her looking at me and she said i said, okay she said, okay, now what do we do . And i said, we should be happy. But then i thought, thats the wrong thing to say because i could see that she could see farther ahead as her fiction proves again and again than almost any of us can see, and i think she saw what was to come. And that it her life was about to be changed. After the great party, we went home to her home in toronto, and went into her living room, didnt turn on any lights. I wanted to Say Something i was excited. Wanted to Say Something. But i didnt. And after a while, she said, i always wanted to be a good writer. I never expected to be a popular one. So, time passes. Its now 1972, and then at that time she was writing poetry and she was recognized in this new York Community as a poet before they really recognized her as a important novelist. She came down here and spoke several times, and her poetry collections would be embraced by the new movement called the feminist. For example, when a couple ofty the titled are power politics, too heavy poems,; margaret never identified herself as a feminist. She identified herself as a strong woman. And an independent woman. And she was gracious to all the feminists that were wanting to put her names on banners and have them join in the parades, but she at any time good s