Six winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced in New York last Thursday night, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The National Book Critics Circle Awards comprise of six categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, autobiography, and criticism.

This year, the prize for fiction went to Louise Erdrich for her novel, La Rose (Harper).

The prize for nonfiction went to Matthew Desmond for his book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown).

The prize for poetry went to Ishion Hutchinson for House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

The prize for biography went to Ruth Franklin for Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright).

The prize for autobiography went to Hope Jahren for her memoir, Lab Girl (Knopf).

And finally, the prize for criticism went to Carol Anderson for White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury).

Other recent awards included the John Leonard Prize for first book, which went to Yaa Gyasi for Homegoing; the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing went to Michelle Dean; and the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award went to Margaret Atwood. The Emerging Critics Fellows include Taylor Brorby, Paul W. Gleason, Zachary Graham, Yalie Saweed Kamara, Summer McDonald, Ismail Muhamad, and Heather Scott Partington.

The National Book Critics Circle’s board of directors selects the winners of the book awards each year. As The New York Times reports, the NBCC awards “stand out from other major awards because book critics deliver the verdicts.”

A video of the ceremony can be viewed on the NBCC’s YouTube channel. Margaret Atwood’s acceptance speech can be read at Lit Hub.

Related reading: Matt Seidel, writing for The Millions, celebrates his favorite book critics “who have attained something like superhero status themselves.”

Image Credit: National Book Critics Circle.