Begun in 1994 to recognize the finest of the year's literary offerings, the BBR Literary Prize includes three awards: the Bingham Poetry Prize, given in memory of Belinda Bingham Pierce; the Rea Non-Fiction Prize, in memory of Anne Rea Jewell; and the Fisk Fiction Prize, in memory of Lilla Fisk Rand. This year's judges were Ann Beattie, Orlando Patterson, and Robert Pinsky; in the past, they've included novelists Thom Jones and Amy Bloom, poets Sharon Olds and Mark Doty, and authors Gerald Early, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sven Birkets.

The Bingham Poetry Prize
Blizzard of One / Mark Strand (Winner)
Sweet Machine / Mark Doty
This Time: New and Selected Poems / Gerald Stern
Trace Elements / Barbara Jordan
Reversing the Spell / Eleanor Wilner
From the Devotions / Carl Phillips

The Rea Non-Fiction Prize
All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery / Henry Mayer (Winner)
Havana Dreams: A Story of Cuba / Wendy Gimbel
The Genetic Gods: Evolution and Belief in Human Affairs / John Avise
Whiteness of a Different Color / Matthew Frye Jacobson
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. / Ron Chernow

Fisk Fiction Prize
Saints and Villains / Denise Giardina (Winner)
The Autobiography of Red / Anne Carson
The Hours / Michael Cunningham
The Giant, O'Brien / Hilary Mantel
Freedomland / Richard Price

The Bingham Poetry Prize
The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry / John Ashbery (Winner)
Desire / Frank Bidart (Winner)
Shroud of the Gnome: Poems / James Tate
The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt / Amy Clampitt
On a Stair / Ann Lauterbach
Falling Water: Poems / John Koethe
Natal Command / Peter M. Sacks
One Crossed Out / Fanny Howe

The Rea Non-Fiction Prize
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down / Anne Fadiman (Winner)
T.R.: The Last Romantic / H. W. Brands
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education / Martha C. Nussbaum
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town ... / J. Anthony Lukas
Civic Ideals : Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History / Rogers M. Smith

Fisk Fiction Prize
The Reader: a Novel / Bernhard Schlink (Winner)
Dreams of My Russian Summers / Andrei Makine
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin / Maeve Brennan
All Around Atlantis: Stories / Deborah Eisenberg
The Nature of Blood / Caryl Phillips

The Bingham Poetry Prize
Ark / Ronald Johnson (Winner)
Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 / Susan Howe
Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems / Bob Kauffman
The Descent of Alette / Alice Notley
Forbidden Entries / John Yau

The Rea Non-Fiction Prize
Angela's Ashes / Frank McCourt (Winner)
Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions / Richard Taruskin
Hitler's Willing Executioners / Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
This Wild Darkness / Harold Brodkey
The Temple Bombing / Melissa Fay Greene

Fisk Fiction Prize
The Autobiography of My Mother / Jamaica Kincaid (Winner)
John's Wife / Robert Coover
Twilight, A Symphony / Michael Joyce
Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories / Taeko Kono
Infinite Jest / David Foster Wallace
The Cattle Killing / John Edgar Wideman
Terror of Earth / Tom La Farge

The Bingham Poetry Prize
Atlantis / Mark Doty

The Rea Non-Fiction Prize
Salvation on Sand Mountain / Denni Covington

The Fisk Fiction Prize
Zombie / Joyce Carol Oates

The Bingham Poetry Prize
Hinge & Sign: Poems, 1968-1993 / Heather McHugh

The Rea Non-Fiction Prize
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages / Harold Bloom

The Fisk Fiction Prize
The Gifts of the Body / Rebecca Brown