Gilb’s Gritos nominated for prestigious NBCC award

SAN MARCOS – Dagoberto Gilb, professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos and an instructor with the MFA program in Creative Writing, has been named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Gritos, Gilb’s 2003 collection of essays from Grove Press, is nominated for the criticism award along with Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Ross King’s Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, Rebecca Solnit’s River of Shadows and Nick Hornby’s Songbook. Other award categories include fiction, general non-fiction, reviewing and poetry. Winners will be announced March 4 at the annual NBCC awards ceremony in New York City.

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, consists of nearly 700 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns.

Gilb’s other published books include The Magic of Blood (Albuquerque, 1993/Grove Press, 1994), The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña (Grove Press, 1995) and Woodcuts of Women (Grove Press, 2001). Among his many awards, Gilb was honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1992, the Whiting Writer’s Award in 1993 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995.