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 Jocelyn Lieu "This is a beautiful book—poetic and candid. I'm putting it into heavy
rotation, and I'll read it once a year for the next 20 years." —Sherman Alexie
By Robert Bly and Tomas Transtromer "The poems of Tomas Transtromer are points of entry 'upward into/the
depths' of an imagination, a spirit that is regeneratively inventive,
capacious, unillusioned, undaunted, admirable." —The New York Times Book Review
By Alice Fulton "This engaging book will delight and challenge readers of poetry, but
it also offers serious pleasure to anyone who loves language." —Mark Doty
By Molly McQuade "No poet will read this book without learning something new about the
nuances of the craft, and no critic will read it without realizing the
need for such liveliness." —Library Journal
By Saskia Hamilton "Saskia Hamilton is not a quiet poet, just an extremely subtle and
fierce one. There is a quality of spiritual stubbornness and
astonishing resilience that courses through even her briefest
utterances...." —Jorie Graham
