The nominees for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the publishing year 2004 in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, biography/autobiography, criticism, and poetry have been selected. The winners will be announced March 18. Founded in 1974, the National Book Critics Circle is a not-for-profit organization of book editors and critics with some 600 members nationwide.

The nominees for the fiction prize are “The Dew Breaker” by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf); “The Line of Beauty” by Alan Hollinghurst (Bloomsbury); “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell (Random House); “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); and “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin).

The nominees for the general nonfiction prize are “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age” by Kevin Boyle (Henry Holt); “Blue Blood” by Edward Conlon (Riverhead); “The Reformation: A History” by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Viking); “The Working Poor: Invisible in America” by David Shipler (Alfred A. Knopf); and “Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story” by Timothy B. Tyson (Crown).

The nominees for biography and autobiography are “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press); “Chronicles, Vol. 1” by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster); “Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare” by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton); “Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart” by John Guy (Houghton Mifflin); “De Kooning: An American Master” by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (Alfred A. Knopf).

The nominations for the poetry award are “The Orchard” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly (BOA Editions); “Cocktails” by D.A. Powell (Graywolf); “The School Among the Ruins” by Adrienne Rich (W.W. Norton); “Interglacial” by James Richardson (Ausable Press); and “Danger on Peaks” by Gary Snyder (Shoemaker & Hoard).

The nominees for criticism are “Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003” by Richard Howard (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); “Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet” by Patrick Neate (Riverhead); “Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century” by Graham Robb (WW. Norton) “Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me” by Craig Seligman (Counterpoint); and “The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel” by James Wood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

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NOTES The Dedalus Foundation, founded by Robert Motherwell to support public understanding of modern art, has announced the recipients of its $20,000 Master of Fine Arts fellowships for 2005: Sculpture students Takashi Horisaki of Washington University in St. Louis and Alexander Beroz of Temple University. The fellowships are meant to ease the transition from being a student of art to being an independent artist. … Daniel Walker, who has been curator of Islamic art at the Metropolitan Museum since 1988, has been appointed director of the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. He will assume his new post on May 1.