The Windham-Campbell Prizes have announced the 2024 winners. These are fiction writers Deirdre Madden, of Ireland, and Kathryn Scanlan, of the United States; nonfiction writers Hanif Abdurraqib, of the U.S., and Christina Sharpe, of Canada and the U.S.; poets Jen Hadfield, of the United Kingdom and Canada, and m. nourbeSe philip, of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago; and dramatists Christopher Chen, of the U.S., and Sonya Kelly, of Ireland.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes offer annual prize money exceeding $1.4 million, and cover the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Each winner receives $175,000. The prizes have awarded more than $18 million in the past decade.
In announcing the awards, Michael Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, emphasized the importance of the prizes in supporting writers. “Each year, I feel incredibly honored to call the eight recipients: to be the messenger delivering the entirely unexpected and life-changing news that they have been awarded $175,000," Kelleher said. "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.”
The Windham-Campbell Prizes were established in 2013, by lifelong partners Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell, to highlight literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. The prizes are administered by Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, with anonymous judges considering nominees from across the world who write in the English language.
