National Book Critics Circle Awards announced

Hilary Mantel’s blockbuster “Wolf Hall” took the top fiction prize at the National Book Critics Circle Awards in New York on Thursday night. The novel about Thomas Cromwell, henchman to King Henry VIII, also won Britain’s prestigious Man Booker prize and is a bestseller in both the U.K. and the United States.

Mantel won over Southern California favorite Michelle Huneven, nominated for her novel “Blame.” Another California writer, William T. Vollmann, also fell short of taking the prize; he was a finalist in the nonfiction category for “Imperial,” his book about the state’s border county. The nonfiction prize was awarded to Richard Holmes for “The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.”

Poet Rae Armantrout, a professor at UC San Diego, won for her collection “Versed.”

Autobiography winner Diana Athill was not in attendance; her memoir “Somewhere Towards the End” was published last year, after she turned 91.

Blake Baily took the biography prize for his acclaimed book “Cheever: A Life,” and Eula Biss took the criticism prize for her essay collection “Notes From No Man’s Land.”

Previously announced recipients Joan Acocella, for excellence in reviewing, and Joyce Carol Oates, for lifetime achievement, accepted their awards at the ceremony at the New School.

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