Author and 2014 Man Booker Prize judge, Sarah Churchwell, along with Benjamin Markovits, author and Granta Best of Young British Novelist 2013, are the joint winners of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award.
Now in its fourth year, the award was set up as part of the Eccles Centre's charge to promote awareness of the British Library collections relating to the U.S. and Canada, and to help facilitate the use of these collections. Each of the winners is awarded £20,000, and will use the collections to research their upcoming publications during their residency, which starts in January 2015.
Churchwell is writing a work of nonfiction, entitled Mastery, in which different biographical perspectives on Henry James in 1897, as he was composing The Turn of the Screw, twist and transform different takes on his most popular novel.
Markovits is writing a novel entitled Happy Families, about a large family of first-generation Texans as they make their way up the class-ladder.
The connection with the Eccles Centre will allow Churchwell and Markovits to quietly to research their projects in the great surroundings of the British Library, and to use the Centre's program and networks to engage with other researchers, students and members of the public.
Philip Davies, Director of the Eccles Centre, said: "The two latest winners of this great prize highlight the role of the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies in supporting the highest quality research and creative writing. The Library's superb North American collections will again provide the foundation for projects that have especially strong trans-Atlantic elements. Sarah Churchwell and Benjamin Markovits, themselves both trans-Atlantic migrants, will be pursuing very different personal projects that both focus on the work and experiences of other trans-Atlantic migrants."
