Archive March 2016

Mai Der Vang Wins Walt Whitman Award

The Academy of American Poets has named Mai Der Vang the recipient of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award, the largest prize in the country for a debut poetry collection. Vang’s winning manuscript, Afterland, will be published in 2017 by Graywolf Press.

Mai Der VangAs part of the prize, Vang will also receive $5,000 and a six-week paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy, and her work will be featured on Poets.org as well as in American Poets, the Academy’s print periodical.

Award-winning poet Carolyn Forché selected Vang as this year’s winner. Of Vang’s manuscript Forché writes, “Afterland has haunted me. I keep returning to read these poems aloud, hearing in them a language at once atavistic, contemporary, and profoundly spiritual. Mai Der Vang confronts the Secret War in Laos, the flight of the Hmong people, and their survival as refugees. That a poet could absorb and transform these experiences in a single generation—incising the page with the personal and collective utterances of both the living and the dead, in luminous imagery and a surprising diction that turns both cathedral and widow into verbs, offering both land and body as swidden (slashed and burned)—is nothing short of astonishing. Here is deep attention, prismatic intelligence, and fearless truth.”

Vang, thirty-four, holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. Her poetry and essays have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere, and she coedited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heydey, 2011). A Kundiman fellow, Vang has also been awarded residencies from Hedgebrook, and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. Vang resides in Fresno, California, where she teaches and works as a writing and creative consultant.

The annual Walt Whitman Award was established in 1975 to encourage the work of emerging poets. Previous winners include Suji Knock Kim, Eric Pankey, J. Michael Martinez, and Sjohnna McCray, whose 2015 winning manuscript, Rapture, will be published next month by Graywolf. 

In Their Own Time: Teaching Artist Caroline Brown on Trust and Boundaries

Caroline Brown is a teaching artist and educator who develops and implements community-based arts programming. Highlights of her work include collaborations with AIDS widows in rural Kenya, incarcerated individuals and those in reentry, military veterans and their family members, and women living with HIV. Most recently Brown has worked with Recovery Cafe, Path With Art, Senior Housing Assistance Group, and the Freehold Engaged Theater Program at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. She is also a faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts and the Art Institute of Seattle. She blogs here about her experiences teaching a P&W–supported workshop series for the Organization for Prostitution Survivors in Seattle, Washington.

Caroline Brown

As an instructor of Community Based Arts at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, I teach students to use their artistic skill set to make a positive impact on marginalized communities. I tell them there’s no formula for our work; however, there are essential principles for building a successful project, two of which are trust and boundaries. We must trust ourselves, trust the community’s level of participation, and trust the ambiguity of the creative process. We must also keep our expectations realistic.

During my recent work with the Organization for Prostitution Survivors (OPS), I discovered I needed to relearn these principles. OPS was founded to address the damaging effects of prostitution and create opportunities for adult women to seek supportive services and heal from gender-based violence. My colleague and I were invited by the OPS staff to conduct an extended workshop using writing, storytelling, movement, and visual art as a form of personal expression and advocacy. For the sake of anonymity, we agreed to create a video with recorded narratives and abstract images chosen by participants.

From the start, I experienced a strong reticence from our workshop attendees. They repeatedly asked: What is the purpose of this video? How is it going to be shared? With whom and for what purpose? I reassured them that this project was theirs and they had complete ownership of the final product. As a population that has been consistently exploited, their reservations weren’t surprising. What was surprising was what it triggered in me.

I liked these women and wanted to help them engage in powerful and meaningful expression. I wanted them to be excited rather than reserved, to see this process as beneficial as opposed to threatening. If they didn’t welcome the work, my colleague and I had no right to be there. It was devastating to imagine that I might be harming people who’ve already been through enough.

Three weeks into the endeavor, my colleague and I reluctantly handed over the reigns, letting our participants decide when they wanted to meet. With this came a sense of panic that the video might not come to fruition. Then it happened. One woman expressed interest in recording her writing. I went out of my way to explain our intent: “I know a lot of women are apprehensive." She interrupted, “I’m not. I’m ready to record.” And so we began. Another woman soon stepped forward. Then another. Eventually we had an eighteen-minute piece of six women sharing their poetry, reflections, narratives, and visual imagery as survivors of prostitution.

Several weeks and countless hours of editing later, we presented the video at an OPS open house event. "Reflections of a Survivor" is a culmination of risk, vulnerability, triumph, conviction, and truth. As I looked around at the women taking in the success of their work, their willingness to trust me with their stories honored and humbled me. In short, each participant trusted the process in her own time. In that moment, I was reminded that I needed to do the same.

Amber Pauline Walker's "Kodiak Whispers," from the video project "Reflections of a Survivor," can be seen on YouTube.

Photo: Caroline Brown. Photo credit: Emily Schoettle.

Support for Readings & Workshops events in Seattle, Washington is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Winners of the 2016 Whiting Awards Announced

The Whiting Foundation has announced the 2016 Whiting Awards winners, who were honored last night at a ceremony at the New York Historical Society in New York City. The annual award is one of the largest monetary prizes given to emerging poets and writers. Each winner receives $50,000.

This year's winners are LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Safiya Sinclair, Layli Long Soldier, and Ocean Vuong in poetry; Alice Sola Kim, Catherine Lacey, and Mitchell S. Jackson in fiction; Brian Blanchfield and J. D. Daniels in nonfiction; and Madeleine George in drama. Find out more about the winners at the Whiting Foundation website, and read excerpts from their work at the Paris Review.

Established by the Whiting Foundation in 1985, the Whiting Awards aim to “identify exceptional new writers who have yet to make their mark in the literary culture." More than $6.5 million has been awarded to over three hundred poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and playwrights since the award’s inception.

Previous winners have included David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Tracy K. Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lydia Davis, Denis Johnson, Mary Karr, Michael Cunningham, Alice McDermott, Jorie Graham, Mark Doty, Ben Fountain, Tobias Wolff, Jonathan Franzen, Terrance Hayes, and more recently Adam Johnson, Elif Batuman, and Anthony Marra. Visit the Whiting Foundation website for a complete list of past winners.

No submissions are accepted to the award; a rotating group of anonymous nominators and judges, made up of writers, editors, agents, critics, professors, booksellers, and other literary professionals, are selected each year by the Whiting Foundation.

Top row, from left: LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Madeleine George, Layli Long Soldier, Safiya Sinclair, J. D. Daniels, Mitchell S. Jackson. Bottom row: Alice Sola Kim, Catherine Lacey, Ocean Vuong, Brian Blanchfield.

Deadline Approaches for Indiana Review Poetry Prize

Submissions are currently open for the 2016 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, given annually for a single poem. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Indiana Review. Camille Rankine will judge.

Using the online submission system, submit up to three poems totaling no more than eight pages with a $20 entry fee by April 1. The fee, which includes a one-year subscription to the review, must be mailed separately to Indiana Review, Ballantine Hall 529, 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Judge Camille Rankine has written one poetry collection, Incorrect Merciful Impulses (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), and is the assistant director of the MFA program at Manhattanville College. “Poetry can say all the hard things, all the things that you aren’t supposed to say in polite conversation,” says Rankine in a recent interview with Indiana Review. “I’m drawn to poems that have something to say—it can be something large or small, but I want to read a poem that feels like it needed to be written.” Rankine’s full interview is available on the journal’s website.

Eduardo C. Corral selected Caitlin Scarano as the winner of the 2015 prize for her poem “Between the Bloodhounds and My Shrinking Mouth.” Eileen Myles selected Cecilia Woloch as the winner of the 2014 prize for her poem “2006.”

Established in 1977, Indiana Review is published biannually and edited by graduate students at Indiana University. The journal publishes poetry, fiction, essays, and art.

Listen to Camille Rankine read from her debut collection as part of the Poets & Writers’ Page One podcast series below.

The Power of Words Where Few Dare to Go: Literary Events in Unlikely Southern California Lands

Ruth Nolan is an author with lifelong Mojave Desert and Inland Empire roots. Her poetry collection Ruby Mountain is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, and her newest fiction appears in LA Fiction Anthology (Red Hen Press, 2016) and in Desert Oracle. She writes about desert-based American Indian arts and culture for News From Native California, Artbound, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, and Desert Report. Nolan teaches at College of the Desert.

Martin Smith and Paiute elder George RossMojave Desert Writing Workshop: February 15, 2016
Stories from a Paiute Indian elder of traditional chuckwalla hunting techniques who watched a rattlesnake bite—and kill—itself. Stories from a Baker man about the time he hiked far into the Soda Mountains on a hot day, became dehydrated, and walked miles to the nearest bar in town for a thirst-quenching beer, which he credits with saving his life. Stories from a woman who rode a school bus to Death Valley High School that was driven by Edward Abbey. Stories about long desert road trips by a man who showed up on a Harley Davidson and wore his leather motorcycle chaps while he wrote.

These tales, and more, were among the writing samples penned and shared by the twenty-five participants at the February 15 Shoshone-Tecopa Arts and Literature Festival writing workshop, which I led along with desert author Craig Deutsche. Workshop participants drove long distances across the Mojave Desert from tiny towns with inspiring names like Furnace Creek, Lone Pine, Tecopa, and Wonder Valley.

Although some might consider the Mojave Desert an unlikely location for literature to flourish, we were, in contrast, able to demonstrate that the desire and need for a vibrant and community-connective writing workshop is strong and flourishing in this little-known desert region of Southern California. Using prompts drawn from poetry, fiction work, and essays by desert literary greats such as Mary Austin and John Steinbeck, workshop participants wrote their hearts out about their own desert experiences and observations.

Songs for San Bernardino readersSongs for San Bernardino / Reading Helps Inland Empire Heal: December 20, 2015
The holiday tree was brightly decorated with ornaments at the entrance of the Muffin Top Bakery in downtown Redlands, California, and the atmosphere inside was warm and cheery, the smell of cinnamon rolls seasoning the air. But for those who gathered together this past December 20 for the poetry and prose reading, “Songs for San Bernardino,” this was no typical holiday literary event. This reading, which I coordinated with San Bernardino natives and authors Liz Gonzalez and Jessica Wyland, was intended to bring community together through the power of stories of place to help heal from the December 2 shootings at the nearby Inland Regional Center, a tragedy that ripped through the fabric of this proud but often overlooked part of Southern California.

Readers at “Songs for San Bernardino” included Chad Sweeney, Casandra Lopez, Frances J. Vasquez, Juanita Mantz, Darlene Kriesel, Alex Avila, Andre Katkov, Liz Gonzalez, Jessica Wyland, and myself, who all have strong connections to San Bernardino. Several read freshly-penned pieces that spoke directly of the impact of December 2, while others read works that reflected the strength, beauty, and strong community spirit of this town. San Bernadino Mayor Carey Davis also spoke. For nearly two hours, all chair and tables at the Muffin Top Bakery were full as the power of the stories and words of some of the Inland Empire’s finest writers gave testimony to the inner strength of this community. Afterwards, the day’s cloudy skies gave way to a gentle late afternoon sun, and rays of light filtered into the room.

Photos (top) Martin Smith and Paiute elder George Ross, (bottom) "Songs for San Bernardino" readers. Photo credit: Ruth Nolan

Major support for Readings & Workshops in California is provided by the James Irvine Foundation and the Hearst Foundations. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Gay, Beatty, Nelson, Jefferson win NBCC Awards

The winners of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night in New York City. The winners include Ross Gay in poetry for Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press), Paul Beatty in fiction for The Sellout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Maggie Nelson in criticism for The Argonauts (Graywolf Press), and Margo Jefferson in autobiography for Negroland (Pantheon).

Charlotte Gordon won in biography for Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley (Random House), and Sam Quinones won in nonfiction for Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury). Kirstin Valdez Quade won the John Leonard Prize—given for an outstanding first book in any genre—for her story collection, Night at the Fiestas (Norton). Carlos Lozada, an associate editor and nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, won the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Wendell Berry, the author of eight novels, two story collections, twenty-eight books of poetry, and thirty-one books of nonfiction, received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

The finalists in poetry were Terrance Hayes for How to Be Drawn (Penguin), Ada Limón for Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions), Sinéad Morrissey for Parallax and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and the late Frank Stanford for What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press).

The fiction finalists were Lauren Groff for Fates and Furies (Riverhead), Valeria Luiselli for The Story of My Teeth (Coffee House Press), Anthony Marra for The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth), and Ottessa Moshfegh for Eileen (Penguin Press).

The finalists in criticism were Ta-Nehisi Coates for Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau), Leo Damrosch for Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake (Yale University Press), Colm Tóibín for On Elizabeth Bishop (Princeton University Press), and James Wood for The Nearest Thing to Life (Brandeis University Press).

The finalists in autobiography were Elizabeth Alexander for The Light of the World (Grand Central), Vivian Gornick for The Odd Woman and the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), George Hodgman for Bettyville (Viking), and Helen Macdonald for H Is for Hawk (Grove Press).

Established in 1974, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, which are among the most prestigious prizes for literature, are given annually for books published in the previous year. A board of twenty-four working newspaper and magazine critics and editors nominates and selects the winners each year. The 2014 winners included Claudia Rankine in poetry, Marilynne Robinson in fiction, and Roz Chast in autobiography.

Photos from left to right: Ross Gay (Jim Krause), Paul Beatty, Maggie Nelson, and Margo Jefferson

A Courageous or Heroic Act

Connie Perry is an artist, comic performer, publicist, and writer. She joined the late Sue Ribner's Cancer Writing Workshop at Roosevelt Hospital in early 2014, just after her cancer treatment, her "hysterical-ectomy." She is currently a participant in Emily Rubin's Write Treatment workshops at the hospital, where there are exciting plans to publish an anthology. As a freelance book publicist, Perry connects authors to media. As a theater usher, she diffuses customer service stress by performing her one-woman show, "Theatre Obsession: Saucy Tales From the Aisle." She will be performing in the ONE Festival in New York City, April 27 and 30. Her visual arts project, utilizing DeaR postcards as seen in Summer Streets 2015 and the Garment District Arts Festival, will connect with comedy variety shows until the presidential election in 2016. Visit @DeaRcards on Instagram for more information.

As a participant in Emily Rubin's Write Treatment workshops for people dealing with and surviving cancer, funded through the Readings & Workshops program at Poets & Writers, we writers gather close around the table, buoyed by our continuing bravery. Not because we have each had cancer battles, but because we face blank pages. There is courage in our pens, our prose spilling onto our notebook paper. We face our pain, our past, and our present with soon-to-be scrawled imagination.

The time to be heroes is now, when the prompt has been given and the scratch of pens unites. We hum along, intent, concentrating, as the air duct hums above us. We are silent, reaching towards the perfect word or any word that describes or harnesses the beast. Oh rise up to us, dear muse, gather us towards a salvation. Give us this half hour of life, dripping and dropping or drowning upon the page.

Real or imagined, our lives are entwined within the hallowed pools of spilled ink, shards of dreams, and delights wanting to be read aloud. The words carry us along the timeless highway of connection. Do we all hover over our process or do we sail full-bodied towards a new happening, a new pronunciation, or a new verb? A new definition of closeness comes forth from our writing. We are humbled or overjoyed by word choice; one that comes in a flash yet has a very deep hidden meaning from some vivid past experience.

How do we know how to spell so precisely as letters form under our might? Cosmic rays of intelligence streak across the margins, coloring our lives with magic, hope, and truth. Do we dare to be so bold and blunt, to wildly run to the edge of sanity? Of course, we need this catharsis of earned sentences. We need this healing of combined stories. Or, we just need to make shit up.

Oh bold prince of black ink, earn your way across this boundary of paper. Churn and turn out endless drafts of optimism or cheeky promise. Do not let me down by running out of things to say. This writers group gropes forward to acknowledge the awe and to continue a dialogue with the universe.

Time seems to stand still as penmanship erodes to blurs and barely formed missives. Then, time speeds up as breath is baited and imaginations fired by plucking from dreams or sentimental wanderings. Be still our hearts as we transfer life forces to blue-lined commitment.

The planets lend their full support; the gods look down upon the labor with admiration, as long-held truths are laid bare. Simple connections between humans are being honored and trusted amid the pushing forward of language.

We feel exhaustion, emotion, exhalation, yet all so exquisite. The senses are full, alive, and driving towards one final statement.

My writing friends, my heroes surround me, excited by the closeness and the exertion, all of us gliding towards a complete piece. Tranquility sets in as the closure sentence rounds out. And for a brave finale, we shall read aloud our work. 

Photo: Connie Perry.  Photo credit: Connie Perry.

Support for Reading & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support form the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Fighting for the Possibility of Creative Work Featuring Jess X. Chen

Jess X. Chen is a filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist/activist and nationally-touring poet. A member of the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, her films and artwork have been featured in the Asian American International Film Festival, the Huffington Post, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Asian Cinevision Diversity Screening at the New York Times. Her poetry has appeared in Nepantla: A Journal For Queer Poets of ColorHyphen, the Margins, and is forthcoming in the Offing. Through art, organizing and education, she is working toward a future where migrant and indigenous youth of color see themselves in stories, whole and heroic, on the big screen, and then grow up to direct their own. You can follow and support her journey at www.jessxchen.com and @jessxchen on Instagram.

When I graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, I decided to pursue the performance of my poetry, the directing of my films, and the teaching of youth art education full time. Growing up with an immense stutter that blocked my ability to speak, and constantly being steered away from the wildness of my own imagination by family members, teachers, and mainstream expressions, I never thought this journey would be possible. Along with the father figures who have been absent from my life, I’ve been uprooted from almost every place I’ve called home, and the content of my work—queer, diasporic, and demanding of migrant and ecological justice—makes it hard for me to survive financially in this world, yet I have still found a way to pursue my art. 

Through poetry, I am reminded that if my ancestors have survived their severance from a culture, and my parents still sing the folk songs of their motherland on a karaoke machine, then the human voice must hold all the resilience in the world. Through poetry I have penned my own emotional history and examined that the human body’s ability to rise again and again holds a hope beyond the logic of our rational world. When the windstorms blow me off my feet and all the starlings in the forest take flight, I shudder to discover the eye of the storm in my own words. 

Support from Poets & Writers has played an important part in this journey. It has funded many of my poetry performances in noninstitutional spaces, women of color reading series and multidisciplinary writing workshops with youth of color across the country, regardless of their size. Poets & Writers tells me that these little poems, these workshops are worth several hundred dollars: enough money for a week of meals, a week of NYC rent, or a flight to visit a long-distance lover. In the grand scheme of things, this support is huge for emerging writers of color who constantly spend their first years struggling to balance multiple unrelated or semi-related jobs to make their creative work possible. Because there is no limit to the amount of times I can ask an organization to apply for my funding, Poets & Writers helps set a new standard urging the importance of compensating writers for their cultural work.  

Poets & Writers recently supported a reading where I had the immense honor of opening for black woman poets, Mahogany Browne and Sonia Sanchez at BRIC Arts Media’s Stoop Series. The reading was also the unveiling of a collaborative mural in the same location cocreated by artist and best friend, Jetsonorama, and I that celebrates Sonia and Mahogany’s intergenerational black sisterhood and their radiant oral tradition. Beginning with an open mic featuring local woman poets of color, this multidisciplinary reading and mural unveiling drew an audience of over three hundred people. Most of them were people of color ranging vastly in age and style. This event is amongst the imaginings of spaces I’d dreamt of as a young girl to someday grow up and be a part of.

I’m learning that dreaming cannot sustain itself without the support of community, compensation, and loving creative spaces that each honor the diverse needs of the artist. Thank you for helping with the sustainment of my dreaming. Today, I am working toward a dream where migrant, indigenous, and LGBTQ people of color can see themselves and their own imaginations, whole and heroic on the blank page and big screen, and then grow up to write and direct their own.

You can support this dream by following my art, poetry and film projects on Instagram @jessxchen. You can also check out the work of two incredible incredible queer poets and activists of color: Kay Ulanday Barrett and Sonia Guinansaca who have both taught me so much.

Support for Readings & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Top photo: Jess X. Chen (Credit: Kat Waterman). Bottom photo: Sonia Sanchez and Mahogany Brown in front of a mural by Jess X. Chen and Jetsonorama (Credit: Jess X. Chen).

Adam Johnson Takes Home Story Prize

At a ceremony Wednesday night in New York City, Adam Johnson was named the  winner of the 2016 Story Prize for his collection Fortune Smiles (Random House). The $20,000 award is given annually for a short story collection published during the previous year.

The two runners-up for the prize were Charles Baxter for There’s Something I Want You to Do (Pantheon) and Colum McCann for Thirteen Ways of Looking (Random House). Each finalist received $5,000. The Story Prize Spotlight Award—an additional prize of $1,000, given for a collection of exceptional merit—went to Adrian Tomine for his collection of graphic short stories, Killing and Dying (Drawn & Quarterly). During Wednesday night’s event, all three finalists read from and discussed their work on stage with prize director Larry Dark.

Last November Fortune Smiles took home the National Book Award, which makes Johnson the first author to win the Story Prize and the National Book Award for the same title. He is also now the first author to have won the Story Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, which he received in 2013 for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son. Johnson is also the author of the story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a California Book Award, among other accolades. He lives in San Francisco and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.

Dark and Story Prize founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists from among a hundred books submitted in 2015, from sixty-four different publishers. A panel of three judges selected the winner: author and previous Story Prize–winner Anthony Doerr; Rita Meade, a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library; and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz.

Fortune Smiles is an electrically imaginative story collection that’s wrestling very hard with the world we’re living in right now,” the judges said. “Johnson writes like Rembrandt painted, richly and specifically, with an inclination toward self-portrait and a gift for making it seem like a whole world carries on not only within but beyond each of these small canvasses.”

Established in 2004 to honor collections of short fiction and to attract more attention to the form, the Story Prize boasts the largest first-prize amount of any fiction award in the United States. Previous winners include Elizabeth McCracken, George Saunders, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Steven Millhauser.

Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

Windham Campbell Prize Winners Announced

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.