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. Graywolf also had another finalist in the criticism
category, Stephen Burt for Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry, and a
finalist in the poetry category, D. A. Powell for Chronic. In 2008, Graywolf
poet Mary Jo Bang won the NBCC Award for her moving collection, Elegy.
"Notes from No Man's Land has a powerful impact on its
readers, and this award is early confirmation of Biss's considerable
talent," said Graywolf Press director and publisher Fiona McCrae.
"This is a wonderful boost for her, and for Graywolf's nonfiction
prize."
Eula Biss is the author of Notes from No Man's Land:
American Essays and The Balloonists. She teaches nonfiction writing at
Northwestern University and is co-editor of Essay Press. Her essays have
appeared in Harper's and the Believer. She lives in Chicago.
The National Book Critics Circle is a not-for-profit
organization of book editors and critics with some 600 members nationwide. The
organization was founded in 1974 to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism
in all media and to create a way for critics to communicate with one another
about their professional concerns. (www.bookcritics.org)
Graywolf Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher
dedicated to the creation and promotion of thoughtful and imaginative
contemporary literature essential to a vital and diverse culture. Graywolf has
published significant books of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and
translations for over thirty-five years, and has become one of the leading
literary publishers in the country.
