The National Book Critics Circle handed out its annual awards ealier this week (see this earlier SFScope story). This year’s Award for Biography went to James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips (published by St. Martin’s Press). NBCC Board Member Jennifer Reese has written a brief review of the book.
Sheldon, as Tiptree, was an honored science fiction writer in the 1960s and 1970s. The current James Tiptree, Jr. Award—for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender—was created and named for her in 1991.
The other finalists for the Award for Biography were:
* The Most Famous Man in Amerca: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate (Doubleday)
* At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 by Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster)
* Flaubert: A Biography by Frederick Brown (Little, Brown)
* A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts (HarperCollins)