Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes
The Donald Windham Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes is an American literary award which offers prizes in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. The award was established at Yale University in 2011 with the first prizes presented in 2013.[1][2][3] Administered by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the award recognizes English language writers from anywhere in the world. The mission of the award is to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. Eight prizes are awarded annually.
Winners receive a citation and an unrestricted remuneration of $165,000. The individual prizes are among the richest literary prize amounts in the world, if not the richest in certain categories.[1] The award is endowed from the combined estates of writer Donald Windham and actor Sandy Campbell. Campbell was Windham's companion of 45 years, and when Campbell died in 1988 he left his estate to Windham with the understanding a literary award would be created from the combined estate after Windham's death.[1] Windham died in 2010, and in 2011 Yale announced they would become administrators of the new award. The inaugural winners were announced in March 2013.
Recipients
2013
The prizewinners with the following citations were announced by Yale president-elect Peter Salovey on March 4, 2013.[4][5][6][7] Each winner received $150,000.[8]
Non-Fiction
- Jonny Steinberg (South Africa) – "Using a novelistic style that gives everyday people heroic complexity and scale, Jonny Steinberg allows us to encounter lives that enlarge our empathy and sharpen our understanding of the human condition."[9]
- Jeremy Scahill (United States) – "Jeremy Scahill’s investigative reporting is in the best tradition of speaking truth to power, waging a political campaign by journalistic means, indefatigable in its detail and international in outlook."[10]
- Adina Hoffman (United States) – "In a land where even the most cautious nonfiction can draw howls of protest, Adina Hoffman combines fastidious listening, even-handed research, and prose so engaged that it makes the long-vanished visible again."[11]
Drama
- Naomi Wallace (United States) – "Naomi Wallace mines historical situations in plays that are muscular, devastating, and unwavering."[12]
- Tarell Alvin McCraney (United States) – "Tarell Alvin McCraney’s working class characters inhabit an extraordinary mythic universe, speaking a poetic language through which we grasp the spiritual stature of embattled people."[13]
- Stephen Adly Guirgis (United States) – "Stephen Adly Guirgis writes dramatic dialogue with passion and humor, creating characters who live on the edge, and whose linguistic bravado reinvigorates the American vernacular."[14]
Fiction
- Zoë Wicomb (South Africa) – "Zoë Wicomb’s subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenges of being in the world."[15]
- James Salter (United States) – "Sentence by sentence, James Salter’s elegantly natural prose has a precision and clarity which make ordinary words swing wide open."[16]
- Tom McCarthy (United Kingdom) – "Tom McCarthy constructs strange worlds where we find reflective echoes of our own and meditations on the meaning and making of art."[17]
2014
The prizewinners with the following citations were announced by Yale president Peter Salovey on March 7, 2014.[18]
Non-Fiction
- John Vaillant (United States) – "John Vaillant writes gripping narratives that combine science, geography, history and anthropology to convey his passionate commitment to preserving natural resources in an environmentally threatened world."[19]
- Pankaj Mishra (India) – "Pursuing high standards of literary style, Pankaj Mishra gives us new narratives about the evolution of modern Asia. He charts the journey from the Indian small town to the metropolis and rebuffs imperialist clichés with equal verve."[20]
Drama
- Kia Corthron (United States) – "Through her command of dramatic spectacle, Kia Corthron places often unheard and marginalized characters within a historical and political context that gives their lives an urgent and poetic resonance."[21]
- Sam Holcroft (United Kingdom) – "Sam Holcroft’s plays explore the routinized and expressive registers of language, gesture, and role-playing, walking the uncomfortably thin line between spectatorship and complicity."[22]
- Noëlle Janaczewska (Australia) – "Noëlle Janaczewska brings innovative stagecraft and a questioning voice to plays that translate cultural and political tensions into drama as complex as it is illuminating."[23]
Fiction
- Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone) – "Aminatta Forna writes through and beyond personal experience to speak to the wider world in subtly constructed narratives that reveal the ongoing aftershocks of living through violence and war."[24]
- Jim Crace (United Kingdom) – "Jim Crace's ever-varied novels return us to the body, to ceremony and to community in a disenchanted world, transforming the indifferent and the repugnant alike into things of beauty."[25]
- Nadeem Aslam (Pakistan) – "Nadeem Aslam’s deftly crafted novels explore historical and political trauma with lyricism and profound compassion."[26]
2015
The prizewinners with the following citations were announced by Yale president Peter Salovey on February 24, 2015.[27]
Non-Fiction
- Edmund de Waal – "Edmund de Waal’s sure narrative instinct and lyrical imagination inform a deeply felt examination of the hold that objects have on our personal and collective memory."[28]
- Geoff Dyer – "Omnivorously curious and psychologically probing, Geoff Dyer’s writings reinvent again and again the possibilities of nonfiction, discovering as many new subjects as he does ways of writing about them."[29]
- John Jeremiah Sullivan – "John Jeremiah Sullivan’s wide-ranging, exuberant essays engage the full spectrum of American life with passion, precision, and wit."[30]
Drama
- Jackie Sibblies Drury – "Jackie Sibblies Drury deftly blends historical inquiry and meta-theatrical experiment to challenge assumptions about race, performance, and individual responsibility."[31]
- Helen Edmundson – "Helen Edmundson’s ambitious plays distill historical complexities through characters whose passions and ethical dilemmas mirror and illuminate a larger political landscape"[32]
- Debbie Tucker Green – "Pushing speech and silence to the limit, Debbie Tucker Green’s plays expose the brutal choices of individuals bound by the imperatives of family, society, and love."[33]
Fiction
- Teju Cole – "Teju Cole’s peripatetic narrators, like his prose, revel in the possibilities and limitations of global urbanity, navigating the fine line between choice and circumstance, perception and memory."[34]
- Helon Habila – "Helon Habila is that rare combination of storyteller and stylist who challenges expectations while deepening our empathy for ordinary people confronting extraordinary times."[35]
- Ivan Vladislavic – "Ivan Vladislavić’s fiction explores the uncomfortable aftermath of apartheid through inventive meditations on the complex intersection of history, politics, and art."[36]
2016
The prizewinners were announced on February 29, 2016.[37] The prize highlighted some works by each author.
Non-Fiction
- Hilton Als (United States) – White Girls (2013) and The Women (1996)[38]
- Stanley Crouch (United States) – Don’t the Moon Look Lonesome? (2000) and Ain’t No Ambulances for No Nigguhs Tonight (1972)[39]
- Helen Garner (Australia) – This House of Grief (2014)[40]
Drama
- Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (United States) – An Octoroon and War[41]
- Hannah Moscovitch (Canada) – East of Berlin (2007) and This is War (2013)[42]
- Abbie Spallen (Ireland) – Lally the Scut (2015) and Pumpgirl (2006)[43]
Fiction
- Tessa Hadley (United Kingdom) – Clever Girl (2013) and The Past (2016) [44]
- C. E. Morgan (United States) – All the Living (2009) and The Sport of Kings (2016)[45]
- Jerry Pinto (India) – Em and the Big Hoom (2012)[46]
2017
The prizewinners were announced March 1, 2017. The authors were chosen for their "literary achievement or promise" and the reward money of $165,000 each would support their continued writing.[47]
Non-Fiction
- Maya Jasanoff (United States)
- Ashleigh Young (New Zealand)
Drama
- Marina Carr (Ireland)
- Ike Holter (United States)
Poetry
- Ali Cobby Eckermann (Australia)
- Carolyn Forché (United States)
Fiction
- André Alexis (Canada)
- Erna Brodber (Jamaica)
2018
The prizewinners were announced on March 7, 2018. The recipients of the $165,000 prize to support their work and give them freedom to write include:[48]
Non-Fiction
- Sarah Bakewell (United Kingdom) — for work that "unknots complex philosophical thought with verve and wit; her eye for detail and her animated conversation bring readers to inhabit the lives of great philosophers."[49] Works include How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (2010) and At the Existentialist Café (2016).
- Olivia Laing (United Kingdom) — for being "a cartographer of human emotion, mixing memoir, biography and critical engagement with an acute sense of place; through the arts, she searches the depths of the self."[50] Works include To the River (2011), The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), and The Lonely City (2016).
Drama
- Lucas Hnath (United States) — for "agile writing which ranges across genres and subjects with voracious curiosity; his wit, formal daring and poetic precision crystallize dramas that are socially incisive and indelible."[51] Works include The Christians (2014) and A Doll's House, Part 2 (2017).
- Suzan-Lori Parks (United States) — for being "an artist whose ethical imagination confronts rather than consoles; she acknowledges in the fissures of language and human relations the complexities of a fraught world."[52] Works include The Death of Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1992), Venus (1996), Topdog/Underdog (2001), and Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) (2014).
Fiction
- John Keene (United States) — for writing that "[w]ith coruscating imagination, language and thought, …experiments with concealed scenes from history and literature, stepping outside the confines of conventional narrative."[53] Works include Annotations (1995) and Counternarratives (2015).
- Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Uganda/United Kingdom) — for work that "opens up a bold and innovatory vista in African letters, encompassing ancient wounds that disquiet the present, and offering the restitution to be found in memory and ritual."[54] She is the author of the novel Kintu (2014).
Poetry
- Lorna Goodison (Canada/Jamaica) — for poetry that "draws us into a panoramic history of a woman’s life, bearing witness to female embodiment, the colonial legacy, mortality, and the sacred."[55] She is the author of 13 collections of poetry including I Am Becoming My Mother (1986) and Oracabessa (2013).
- Cathy Park Hong (United States) — for poetry with "exhilarating and surprising language that connects us to unheard migrant voices, and her searching look at dystopic states which gives her poetry urgent power."[56] Works include Dance Dance Revolution (2007) and Engine Empire (2012).
2019
The prizewinners were announced March 12, 2019. The authors were chosen for their "literary achievement or promise" and the reward money of $165,000 each would support their continued writing.[57]
Non-Fiction
- Raghu Karnad (India)[58]
- Rebecca Solnit (United States)[59]
Drama
- Young Jean Lee (United States)[60]
- Patricia Cornelius (Australia)[61]
Fiction
- Danielle McLaughlin (Ireland)[62]
- David Chariandy (Canada) [63]
Poetry
- Ishion Hutchinson (Jamaica) [64]
- Kwame Dawes (Ghana/Jamaica/United States) [65]
2020
The prize winners were announced March 19, 2020.[66] Each winner received $165,000.
Non-Fiction
- Maria Tumarkin (Australia) - "Maria Tumarkin's inventive writing on our current historical moment shows a relentless empathy and curiosity about the complexities of our world and its uncertainties."[67]
- Anne Boyer (United States) - "With unflinching self-scrutiny, Anne Boyer exposes uncomfortable truths about our culture’s mistreatment of the individual in duress and the ways in which we are complicit in that neglect."[68]
Drama
- Aleshea Harris (United States) - "Aleshea Harris’s meticulous pageantries of brutal injustice vibrate with rage, grief, hope, and truth, breathing life into ancient forms and indelibly making seen those who were unseen."[69]
- Julia Cho (United States) - "In stagecraft intimate with cadences of the spoken and unspoken, Julia Cho enlivens human connection in the languages of home and estrangement."[70]
Fiction
- Namwali Serpell (United States / Zambia) - "Namwali Serpell reimagines the transmission of modern history through the commingled lives of her Zambian characters, writing unerringly sure prose and re-enchanting the contemporary novel in the process."[71]
- Yiyun Li (United States) - "Yiyun Li masterfully explores the landscape of loss with delicacy and precision, restoring the fractured lives of ordinary people on the margins, endowing them with agency and power."[72]
Poetry
- Bhanu Kapil (United States/ UK) - "Through transgressive, lyrical language Bhanu Kapil undoes multiple genres to excavate crucial questions of trauma, healing, immigration, and embodiment at the outskirts of performance and process."[73]
- Jonah Mixon-Webster (United States) - "With tenderness and ferocity, Jonah Mixon-Webster invents dynamic multi-modal forms to indict structural racism, and to connect the personal to the violence and beauty of history."[74]
References
- Charles McGrath. "A Writer’s Estate to Yield $150,000 Literary Prizes", New York Times, June 17, 2011.
- Carolyn Kellogg (June 20, 2011). "Yale to launch $150,000 writing award". LA Times. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
- David Brensilver (June 22, 2011). "Yale Launches Literary Prize Program". New Haven Independent. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
- "2013 Prize Winners". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. Retrieved September 17, 2013.
- Adam W. Kepler (March 4, 2013). "Winners of Hefty New Literary Prizes Announced". New York Times. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- R.D. Pohl (March 6, 2013). "Yale awards nine writers its inaugural Windham Campbell Literature Prizes". Buffalo News. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- David Ng (March 4, 2013). "Windham-Campbell, new Yale literary prize, honors three playwrights". LA Times. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- Dorie Baker (March 4, 2013). "Yale awards $1.35 million to nine writers". YaleNews. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
- "Prize Citation for Jonny Steinberg". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Jeremy Scahill". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Adina Hoffman". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Naomi Wallace". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Tarell Alvin McCraney". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Stephen Adly Guirgis". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Zoë Wicomb". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for James Salter". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Tom McCarthy". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
- "2014 Prizewinners Announcement". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for John Vaillant". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Pankaj Mishra". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Kia Corthron". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Sam Holcroft". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Noëlle Janaczewska". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Aminatta Forna". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Jim Crace". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Prize Citation for Nadeem Aslam". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- "Yale Announces 2015 Prizewinners". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Edmund de Waal". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Geoff Dyer". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for John Jeremiah Sullivan". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Jackie Sibblies Drury". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Helen Edmundson". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Debbie Tucker Green". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Teju Cole". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Helon Habila". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Prize Citation for Ivan Vladislavić". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- "Windham-Campbell Prizes: The Phone Call of a Lifetime". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Hilton Als". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Stanley Crouch". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Helen Garner". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Branden Jacobs-Jenkins". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Hannah Moscovitch". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Abbie Spallen". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Tessa Hadley". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "C. E. Morgan". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- "Jerry Pinto". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- Mike Cummings (March 1, 2017). "Yale awards eight writers $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes". YaleNews. Retrieved April 28, 2017.
- "Yale awards eight writers $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes". YaleNews. 2018-03-07. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Sarah Bakewell". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Olivia Laing". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Lucas Hnath". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Suzan-Lori Parks". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "John Keene". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Lorna Goodison". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Cathy Park Hong". windhamcampbell.org. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- "Live from London: the 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize Recipients". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Raghu Karnad". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Rebecca Solnit". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Young Jean Lee". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Patricia Cornelius". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Danielle McLaughlin". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "David Chariandy". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Ishion Hutchinson". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- "Kwame Dawes". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- Alison Flood (March 19, 2020). "Eight authors share $1m prize as writers face coronavirus uncertainty". The Guardian. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Maria Tumarkin". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Anne Boyer". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Aleshea Harris". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Julia Cho". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Namwali Serpell". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Yiyun Li". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Bhanu Kapil". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "Citation for Jonah Mixon-Webster". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
External links
- The Windham Campbell Prizes, official website.