In addition to 'Ecstatic Nation' (a 'New York Times' "Notable Book") Brenda Wineapple is the author of 'White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson,' a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, a 'New York Times' "Notable Book," and named best nonfiction of 2008 in 'The Washington Post,' 'The Christian Science Monitor,' 'The Economist,' among many other publications. Her earlier books include 'Hawthorne : A Life,' winner of the Ambassador Book Award for the Best Biography of 2003; 'Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein'; 'Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner.' In 2014 she received a the prestigious Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; she's also received a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, and two National Endowment Humanities Fellowships. She is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of American Historians, and the New York Institute of the Humanities.