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Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” and Lauren Groff’s “Fates and Furies” are finalists for the National Book Critics Circle prize.

New Yorker literary critic James Wood, memoirist Helen Macdonald and poet Terrance Hayes also were among the 30 nominees announced this week. The NBCC selected five finalists in each of six categories, ranging from fiction to autobiography.

Poet, fiction writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry is to receive a lifetime achievement honor. Kirstin Valdez Quade’s short-story collection “Night at the Fiestas” won the John Leonard prize for best first book in any genre, and Carlos Lozada, associate editor and nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, will receive a citation for excellence in reviewing.

Coates’ anguished open letter to his teenage son about race and police violence has been on best-seller lists for months and won the nonfiction National Book Award last fall. Groff’s novel about the differing perspectives of a marriage was a National Book Award finalist; President Barack Obama said it’s his favorite book of 2015.

Other fiction nominees included Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout,” Valeria Luiselli’s “The Story of My Teeth,” Anthony Marra’s “The Tsar of Love and Techno” and Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Eileen.”

Coates’ book and Wood’s “The Nearest Thing to Life” were criticism finalists, along with Leo Damrosch’s “Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake,” Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts” and Colm Toibin’s, “On Elizabeth Bishop.”

Macdonald’s best-selling “H Is for Hawk” was a nominee for autobiography, along with Elizabeth Alexander’s “The Light of the World,” Vivian Gornick’s “The Odd Woman and the City,” George Hodgman’s “Bettyville” and Margo Jefferson’s “Negroland.”

In general nonfiction, finalists were Mary Beard’s best-selling “SPQR: A History of Rome,” Ari Berman’s “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” Jill Leovy’s “Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America,” Sam Quinones’ “Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” and Brian Seibert’s “What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing.”

The critics circle was founded in 1974 and has about 700 members nationwide. Winners will be announced March 17.

— Hillel Italie, Associated Press

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