Windham-Campbell Prizes Give Writers $1.35 Million

The Windham-Campbell Prizes in literature are nouveau riche, in the best sense of the phrase. Most literary prizes that people have heard of — the Nobel, the Pulitzer, the National Book Award — have been around for quite a while. But the Windham-Campbell, despite its classical sounding appellation, is a newbie on the scene. The novelist Donald Windham endowed the awards with a fortune he inherited from his partner Sandy Campbell. (Yale University — not so nouveau — administers the prizes.)

So that’s the nouveau part — this is just year four of the Windham-Campbell prizes. Now for the riche: the prizes are worth $150,000 each — a fortune to most people and, for a writer, a license to shelve once and for all any regrets about not going to law school. (Yes, of course, money is not why writers write — it’s just good to be valued, right?) This year’s Windham-Campbell Prizes winners are:

Fiction:
Tessa Hadley (United Kingdom)
C.E. Morgan (United States)
Jerry Pinto (India)

Nonfiction:
Hilton Als (United States)
Stanley Crouch (United States)
Helen Garner (Australia)

Drama:
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (United States)
Hannah Moscovitch (Canada)
Abbie Spallen (Ireland)