Eula Biss Wins Prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award
March 12, 2010--Graywolf Press is pleased to announce that
Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss has been selected as the
winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. The
winners were announced last night during a ceremony at the New School's Tishman
Auditorium.
Jeffrey Shotts, senior editor at Graywolf Press, was
thrilled with the news. "The NBCC Awards are one of the majors," he
said. "It's gratifying to have an award come out of such a large and
distinguished body of critics and writers and serious people about the art and
craft of literature. We couldn't
be prouder of Eula Biss."
Notes from No Man's Land: American
Essays was named a best book of the year by Time Out Chicago and a School
Library Journal Best Adult Book for High School Students. Biss's spare,
sometimes lyric essays explore the legacy of race in America, artfully revealing
in intimate detail how families, schools, and neighborhoods participate in
preserving racial privilege. National Public Radio called the collection
"forceful, beautiful essays," and the Chicago Tribune said "Biss
is telling us the story of our country--one we never saw coming." The book
won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Read more...
"So much happens in their small, hard shapes: wit, sorrow, and an
intelligence that nips and worries its subjects into giving up their
full oddity and originality. A reader does not consume this poetry. She
is, instead, pinched and prodded towards revelation. Each neat poem is
a Pandora's box full of wonderful troubles." —Lynn Emanuel
WINNER OF THE 2010 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
“I fought with this book. I shouted, ‘Amen!’ I cursed at it for being so wildly wrong and right. It’s so smart, combative, surprising, and sometimes shocking that it kept me twisting and turning in my seat like I was on some kind of socio-political roller coaster ride. Eula Biss writes with equal parts beauty and terror. I love it.”
“Reading this clear-eyed, sorrowing, searching poem of witness, I feel gooseflesh, and I weep, for fear and for the truth of our U.S. racism, which goes on and goes on. I admire everything Martha Collins has written, and I feel she was born to write this book. I want to quietly thank her, and to quietly thank those to whose memory she dedicates this great work.”—Jean Valentine
By Elizabeth Alexander "The Black Interior, a critical look at some of black America's
most influential cultural voices, may be another such
masterpiece....Best known for her poetry, it may be that poet's
lyricism and eye for nuance that makes this new work so compelling." —SAVOY
