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...
By Tom Sleigh A witty and fiercely original book about poetry, the body, and the life
of the artist by a poet whose writing "refuses to cut emotional corners
and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution" (Seamus Heaney).
By Carl Phillips "Readers of Carl Phillips's poetry will have some preparation for the
pleasures and insights of this volume, particularly its subtlety,
originality, and historical range. Yet Coin of the Realm will also be
admired as a prose work that stands alone. Incisive essays on George
Herbert, the Psalms, the place of race and identity in habits of
perception and reading, and the author's growth as a writer are unified
by central questions of beauty and ethics that will be of interest to
anyone who cares about literature." —Susan Stewart
By D. A. Powell "Like Powell's other books, this is startling, but this is startling in
a new way, toward its close sounding more like Richard Crashaw—with
its rich and elaborate religious imagery, its saintly foods and
fabrics—than a casual modern poet." —Thom Gunn
“Delving into the past, in this wonderful, singularly wry memoir, turns up enough guilt to go around for everyone. And yet, such is the honesty, humor and literary skill of Terese Svoboda that she manages to turn this sad story into a triumph of compassion and insight.” —Phillip Lopate, author of The Art of the Personal Essay
