The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize is a very big deal, awarded by a very wonderful press, and the winner of this year’s award only further speaks to the importance of this essay series. Eula Biss's work has appeared in Harper’s and The Believer, and in a previous collection of essays, The Balloonists. About her work the poet and essayist Albert Goldbarth spares no praise: “The wide embrace of her observation speaks well for her essays, which are always ideologically alive even as they are grounded in fascinating details: children's dolls, the history of telephone poles, the saga of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.” Indeed there is, it seems, no juxtaposition too impossible, too difficult for Eula Biss to make both elegant and provocative. In her prizewinning collection, Notes from Man's Land, she visits place and history and family, finding children and slaves and borders and, as one of her subjects advises, always keeps her eyes on the world. Eula Biss teaches nonfiction writing at Northwestern University and is co-editor of Essay Press.
For more on the work of Graywolf visit http://www.graywolfpress.org. But my advice is to purchase this terrific collection --- after you've listened to the interview on Monday at noon --- or even before, at 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara or streaming along nicely online and archived for 90 days at http://www.kpfk.org
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