On Tuesday the recipients of the Windham-Campbell Prizes were announced at Yale University. Eight writers will be awarded $175,000 each to support their work and allow them to focus on their creative projects.
The recipients are;
Deirdre Madden (Ireland) – fiction
– Kathryn Scanlan (United States) – fiction
– Christina Sharpe (Canada/United States) – nonfiction
– Hanif Abdurraqib (United States) – nonfiction
– Christopher Chen (United States) – drama
– Sonya Kelly (Ireland) – drama
– m. nourbeSe philip (Canada/Trinidad and Tobago) – poetry
– Jen Hadfield (United Kingdom/Canada) – poetry
The Windham-Campbell Prizes are a major global prize that recognises eight writers each year for literary achievement across four categories – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. With annual prize money exceeding $1.4m USD – and total prize money awarded over the past decade at over $18m USD – they are one of the most significant prizes in the world.
Michael Kelleher, Director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, said: “Each year, I feel incredibly honoured to call the eight recipients: to be the messenger delivering the entirely unexpected and life-changing news that they have been awarded $175,000. It is clear – now, more than ever – how challenging working in the creative industries, around the world, can be. A Windham Campbell Prize is intended to offer financial security, and through this freedom, the time and space to write, to think, to create – all without pressure or expectation.”
theatrical scene over the past decade, Ireland’s Sonya Kelly, has been rewarded for her skill and elegance as a storyteller, crafting universal, dramatic experiences – as seen in her plays such as Once Upon a Bridge and The Last Return – that are simultaneously funny, farcical, thrilling, satirical and deeply serious.
The Windham-Campbell Prize 2024 selection committee – which remains anonymous – has given the following citations for Christopher Chen and Sonya Kelly:
“Christopher Chen challenges our relationship to truth and accuracy, spectatorship and performance, repeatedly disrupting our expectations of drama and form.”
“Sonya Kelly’s plays sparkle with the quirkiness of the everyday, exploding fleeting moments into lyrical revelations, as she grapples with human fragility and pathos.”
In Poetry, Trinidad and Tobago’s internationally renowned poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist, m. nourbeSe philip, has been selected for her diverse and rich body of work – including Zong! As Told to the Author by Setaey Adamu Boateng – that is deeply engaged with the complexities of art, colonialism, identity, race, and forgotten and suppressed histories, and that constantly pushes boundaries on the page and in performance. The United Kingdom and Canada’s Jen Hadfield – poet, bookmaker and visual artist – is also recognised for her exceptional poetry collections such as the T.S. Eliot award-winning Nigh-No-Place. Hadfield’s work is characterized by a deep immersion in the matters of language and place, the use of Shetlandic and Scots dialect, and a profound focus on ecological matters including an intense grief at the damage that humanity has done to the environment.
The Windham-Campbell Prize 2024 selection committee – which remains anonymous – has given the following citations for m. nourbeSe philip and Jen Hadfield:
“Inventing derelict tongues of refusal, m. nourbeSe philip breaks open and reimagines the horror of official speech and how it acts, creating a genre-obliterating poetry.”
“Jen Hadfield’s intricate poems slow down time, reveal overlooked details of the natural world, and forge complex relationships between language, history, and place.”
The Prizes were the brainchild of lifelong partners Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell. The couple were deeply involved in literary circles, collected books avidly, read voraciously as well as penning various works. For years they had discussed the idea of creating an award to highlight literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. When Campbell passed away unexpectedly in 1988, Windham took on the responsibility for making this shared dream a reality. The first prizes were announced in 2013.
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