The recipients of the 2016 Windham Campbell Prizes for Literature have been announced. Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the annual awards are given to English-language writers of fiction, nonfiction, and drama for outstanding literary achievement or great potential. Each writer receives $150,000.
The winners in fiction are Tessa Hadley (U.K.), C. E. Morgan (U.S.), and Jerry Pinto (India); the winners in nonfiction are Hilton Als (U.S.), Stanley Crouch (U.S.), and Helen Garner (Australia); and the winners in drama are Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (U.S.), Hannah Moscovitch (Canada), and Abbie Spallen (Ireland).
The Windham Campbell Prizes were established in 2013 by Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell to “call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns.” The prizes are open to writers from anywhere in the world at all stages of their careers. There is no application process for the prize; the awards are made by a group of nominators, a three-member jury in each category, and a nine-member selection committee. Past winners have included Teju Cole, Geoff Dyer, John Jeremiah Sullivan, James Salter, and Naomi Wallace. The 2017 prizes will expand to include a poetry category.
The winners will receive their prizes during an international literary festival at Yale in September celebrating their work. All festival events are free and open to the public. For more information about the prizes and the 2016 winners, visit the Windham Campbell Prizes website.
Below, watch 2016 nonfiction winner Hilton Als deliver the keynote lecture at last year's Windham Campbell Prizes Festival.
Hilton Als' 2015 Windham-Campbell Lecture from Windham Campbell Prizes on Vimeo.
Photos: C. E. Morgan, Stanley Crouch, Hilton Als.