E.L. Doctorow's ``Billy Bathgate'' won the fiction category in the 1989 National Book Critics Circle awards announced Monday. The awards are given annually for new books by American authors published in the United States. The board called ``Billy Bathgate'' a ``wondrous achievement by a writer who has written other fine novels in his distinguished career.'' The winner in the general non-fiction category was ``The Broken Cord'' by Michael Dorris, a first-person account of how fetal alcohol syndrome affected the author's son. ``A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt,'' by Geoffrey C. Ward, was the winner in the biography-autobiography category; ``Transparent Gestures,'' by Rodney Jones, won for poetry; and ``Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History,'' by James Clive, won for criticism. The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, is a non-profit organization of 580 book critics and book review editors. The award ceremony is scheduled for March 8 at New York University.
