Windham-Campbell Prizes 2024 recipients announced
In the US, the recipients of the 2024 Windham-Campbell Prizes, worth US$175,000 (A$268,500) each, have been announced.
For fiction, the prize recognised Irish author Deirdre Madden, whose work—including Molly Fox’s Birthday (Faber), among 12 novels—‘explores the political, economic and personal through understated yet resonant prose, returning again and again to themes of memory, identity, relationships and the role played by the arts in daily life’; as well as US author Kathryn Scanlan for her ‘ever-evolving rich, sharp, and absurdist works’ including Kick the Latch (Daunt Books).
The nonfiction category celebrates academic Christina Sharpe’s work including Ordinary Notes (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a New Yorker and New York Times Book of the Year, which explores ‘the complex relationship between language and black being, in which Sharpe fuses archival work, cultural criticism, memoir, and photography’; as well as US author Hanif Abdurraqib, in recognition of his ‘beautiful, vital and moving body of highly acclaimed literary criticism,’ including the Carnegie Medal–winning A Little Devil in America: In praise of Black performance (Penguin Press).
In poetry, recipients are Trinidad and Tobago poet, novelist, playwright and essayist m. nourbeSe philip, selected for her ‘diverse and rich body of work’, including Zong! As told to the author by Setaey Adamu Boateng (Mercury Pr), a work ‘deeply engaged with the complexities of art, colonialism, identity, race, and forgotten and suppressed histories, and that constantly pushes boundaries on the page and in performance’; and UK and Canada poet, bookmaker and visual artist Jen Hadfield, selected for her exceptional poetry collections—including the T S Eliot Prize–winning Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books)—which are ‘characterised by a deep immersion in the matters of language and place, the use of Shetlandic and Scots dialect, and a profound focus on ecological matters including an intense grief at the damage that humanity has done to the environment.’
Two writers also received recognition for their work in drama: playwrights Christopher Chen of the US, ‘for his portfolio of formally innovative and politically provocative plays’, and Sonya Kelly of Ireland, ‘for her skill and elegance as a storyteller, crafting universal, dramatic experiences’.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes recognise the body of work to date of eight writers from around the world, providing them with time to work on their craft. Last year’s winners were Percival Everett, Ling Ma, Susan Williams, Darran Anderson, Alexis Pauline, g nanouk okpik, Dominique Morisseau and Jasmine Lee-Jones.
Category: International news
