Imagine you’re a writer who gets a phone call informing you that you’ve won a literary prize worth $165,000 and you didn’t even know that you were nominated for it! That’s what’s just happened for the eight recipients of this year’s Windham-Campbell Prizes. Part of what’s so brilliant about these literary prizes is that they don’t follow the traditional model of book awards by announcing their judges or lists of candidates beforehand; they are simply announced giving writers a previously unforeseen level of financial security to continue working on their artform.
Two winners are selected for the categories including Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama and Poetry. It’s notable that this year it’s a female dominated winners list with seven women and one man. Since this is a global prize these are also writers whose origins span many different countries including India, China, Zambia, Australia and the United States. I’m especially thrilled to see Yiyun Li on this year’s list since I loved reading her memoir “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life” and novel “Where Reasons End”. The other recipient of this year’s fiction prize is Namwali Serpell whose novel “The Old Drift” has received a large amount of praise and is a book I’ve been meaning to read.
In the poetry category the winners are Bhanu Kapil who is the author of several collections and is a fellow blogger at the brilliantly titled The Vortex of Formidable Sparkles. The other winner is Jonah Mixon-Webster whose debut poetry collection Stereo(TYPE) addresses the economic and health crisis in his native city of Flint, Michigan. The recipients of the drama category are Julia Cho, the author of nine plays which explore the power and frailty of human connection—between cultures, between individuals, between generations, between institutions; and Aleshea Harris whose two plays confront the physical and psychological wounds of misogyny and racism. The recipients of the nonfiction category are Maria Tumarkin, author of four nonfiction books which explore the interrelatedness of past and present; and Anne Boyer whose writing blurs the boundaries between different forms as exemplified in her most recent book “The Undying” which is a non-traditional memoir about cancer.
I’m looking forward to exploring the work of these authors. The Windham-Campbell Prizes are exceptionally good at highlighting and raising awareness for literary talent that is under-appreciated and under-represented in mainstream publishing. Let me know if you’ve read any of these winners or which you’re most interested in reading now.
