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 Maile Chapman FORTHCOMING APRIL 2010
“Rural Finland may not seem a very likely locale for a gripping intellectual thriller, but pulling this off is merely the first of Maile Chapman’s many accomplishments here. Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto—what a title!—is as creepy as Patricia Highsmith at her best and as psychologically sharp (and confounding) as early Ian McEwan. With its portrayal of how quickly the conscience in shipwreck succumbs to delusion, Chapman has written more than a beautifully observed and utterly convincing first novel: she has written something of unfakeable importance.”
By Jason Shinder
“Stupid Hope is a generous, entertaining, and disturbing collection by a poet who left us all too soon. On full display is Shinder’s gift for confronting the truths of sex and sickness, lust, and the betrayal of the body from within—all part of a search for the path that will lead him out of loneliness and into love.”
By Mary Leader "The best poems in this book are like looking at a great John Ford
film: something elemental within American experience, something born in
deprivation but capable of possessing grandeur, has found classic
expression. See (perhaps best of all) 'Among Things Held at Arm's
Length.' Mary Leader's book beautifully and eloquently recovers a world
in the act of discovering her distance from it." —Frank Bidart
“To my mind, what distinguishes Marchant’s work is his willingness to take a hard look at human suffering while maintaining his unflinching, delicate tone.”
By Per Petterson FORTHCOMING AUGUST 2010
“Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a
northern landscape painting—all shafts of light and clear palpable chill.”
