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...
“Each of the four sections of this book is punctuated by Burt’s
brilliant version of a poem by Callimachus. Burt thereby casts an eerie
light on the American life that fills the rest of his book, as the
poems move from the endless deferral of adolescence (‘we will know who
we are once we have won’) to the plenitude and deprivations that
sustain adulthood. This is a masterly book by one of the most gifted
poets of his generation.” —Frank Bidart
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 Kathleen Jamie “A book of unparalleled beauty, sharpness of observation, wit, delicacy, strength of vision and rare exactness of language.”—The Daily Telegraph
By Tony Hoagland "An absolutely refreshing compound of playfulness and depth. . . .
There's no warmed-over theory on this menu, and no guilt casserole
either: it's an unabashedly spicy book. But if one is seduced into the
book by the wildness of its flavors, one finishes by loving its
substance." —Heather McHugh
By Natasha Trethewey "Natasha Trethewey's book puts women's work, and, in particular, black
women's work, the hard unpretty background music of our survival, in
its proper perspective. For all her meticulous control and subtle
perception, this is a revolutionary book that cuts right through to the
deepest places in the soul." —Toi Derricotte
