David Biespiel Elected to Board of National Book Critics Circle

Local literary powerhouse and founder of The Attic has some exciting news to share. That’s right one of our Portland, OR literary treasures gets to help pick the NBCC Award winners for a three year term. Exciting news for one of our own. Thanks to the Attic for passing this press release along. 

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is pleased to announce the outcome of membership voting to fill the eight board-member slots for three-year terms that begin in 2010. Joining–and in one case rejoining–the board in March are:
 
Mark Athitakis, Colette Bancroft, Gregg Barrios, David Biespiel, Stephen Burt, David Haglund, Barbara Hoffert, and Carolyn Kellogg

The National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors is the governing body of the professional organization that’s dedicated to books and writers. The Board is also the official voting body for the annual National Book Critics Circle Awards. 

Since 1974 previous NBCC award-winners include: 
E.L. Doctorow, Maxine Hong Kingston, Elizabeth Bishop, Bruno Bettelheim, Toni Morrison, Robert Lowell, John Cheever, John Updike, Robert Caro, Katha Pollitt, Gore Vidal, Seymor M. Hersch, Louise Erdrich, Barry Lopez, Joseph Brodsky, Philip Roth, Bharati, Mukherjee, James Laughlin, Jane Smiley, Cormac McCarthy, and others. For more information about the NBCC Board of Directors election results: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/2010_board_member_election_results/ 

Finalist for the 2010 NBCC Awards can be found here: 
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national_book_critics_circle_announces_finalists_january_23_2010/

The Attic is pleased to forward this information to the community and media. For more information, please e-mail: info@atticwritersworkshop.com. 

David Biespiel grew up in Texas and has lived in Oregon since 1995. He has been recognized as one of the most innovative poets of his generation, a liberal commentator on national politics, and also one of the nation’s experts in teaching writing. Looking to create an independent literary studio, David Biespiel established the Attic Writers’ Workshop in 1999 as a haven for writers in Portland’s historic Hawthorne district. Among his publications are Shattering Air, Pilgrims & Beggars, Wild Civility, and The Book of Men and Women. He has been honored with a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, a Lannan Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Since 2002, he has been the columnist on poetry for The Oregonian, making his the longest-running newspaper column on poetry in the country. In 2005 he was named editor of Poetry Northwest–resurrecting the esteemed magazine from dormancy into a national venue for outstanding poems and a lively discourse about poetry and public culture–and served as editor until 2010. Since 2008, he as been a frequent contributor to Politico’s “Arena,” a cross-party, cross-discipline daily conversation about politics and policy among more than a hundred current and former members of Congress, governors, mayors, political strategists and scholars. David Biespiel can be reached at db@atticwritersworkshop.com.

Established in 1999, the Attic Writers’ Workshop is a haven for writers. Located in Portland’s Hawthorne District, the Attic provides workshops and individualized services for some 400 writers each year. Click here for more information about the Attic.