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 Dorothea Tanning "Dorothea Tanning's verbal wizardry is a constant surprise, an abiding
delight, and readers who sit down to A Table of Content can expect to
stand up more strangely themselves. She wears her soul on her sleeve,
and it shines, it shines!" —J. D. McClatchy
By Carl Phillips "The lyric sounding of human feeling against desire, the natural world
and religious striving has been reenvisioned by Phillips over three
books, including last year's NBA-finalist From the Devotions.
In this brilliant fourth collection, foreboding fields and roaming
creatures...continue to echo the sorrow, alienation and eros of bodily
existence." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
By Laura Kalpakian "Laura Kalpakian's new collection of short stories feels both
old-fashioned and surprisingly fresh. That her characters sometimes
manage to unleash their suppressed passions is the thrill at the core
of her anachronistic and often quirky work." —The New York Times Book Review
“For newcomers, it will be a guidebook; for experienced readers, Burt offers what may be the first concentrated statement explaining how and why we, consumers and writers of contemporary poetry, read.”
By Tracy K. Smith "This is a smart, daring first book of poems. Driven by Smith's raging
desire of imagination, many of these often quiet poems describe
something that's not there with deft grammar reaching toward
possibility." —Listed as one of eight best poetry books in Black Issues Book Review
