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 David Rosenthal and Merce Rodoreda "The humor in the stories, as well as their thrill of realism, comes
from a nabokovian precision of observation and transformation of plain
experience into enchanging prose." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
By David Rosenthal and Merce Rodoreda "The humor in the stories, as well as their thrill of realism, comes
from a nabokovian precision of observation and transformation of plain
experience into enchanging prose." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
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
By Jane Kenyon "Jane Kenyon is our Akhmatova. She will be read and remembered here as
Akhmatova is read and remembered over there. For this we give no thanks
becaue the gift is beyond thanks. But how deply we are
indebted!" —Hayden Carruth
