Bob Dylan was a no-show, but plenty of other NBCC nominees turned out for the organization's annual fete, held March 18 at the New School in Manhattan (on 12th Street in the Village). Penguin was the big winner, with two prizes, while Marilynne Robinson's Gilead took the fiction award. Philip Roth's Plot Against America was shut out. The criticism prize went to surprise (and surprised) winner Patrick Neate, author of Where You're At, a paperback original and a work of hip-hop tourism.