Congratulations to 1999 Hampshire College graduate Eula Biss, who won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays.

Published by Graywolf Press, Notes from No Man’s Land also received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize.

The collection of essays about America and race is the second book by Biss. The Balloonists was released in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press.

Her Hampshire College Division III (senior thesis) was entitled The Year of the Balloonists. Her Div III faculty committee was poetry professor Paul Jenkins (chair) and co-director of the College’s writing program Deborah Gorlin.

Following Hampshire, Biss completed an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa. She currently teaches and is an artist in residence at Northwestern University. She is a founding editor of Essay Press.

Her essays have appeared in The Best Creative Nonfiction and the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Nonfiction, as well as Harper’s, The Believer, Columbia, North American Review, and Seneca Review.

National Book Critics Circle Awards