News

As temperatures climb in New Haven, we've been delighted to receive notes from friends of the Prizes who are scattered around the globe. They've written to us about their experiences reading works by 2018 prize recipients, and we're hoping their thoughts inspire your own readerly explorations.

Aaliyah Ibrahim on Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu

The heart of our story is a love story that you may have heard–maybe at Damian Barr's Literary Salon in London, where we celebrated it a few years ago–that started one day in the studio of Paul Cadmus, where Donald Windham met Sandy Campbell, a model for the artist's paintings. (Listen to Prize Director Michael Kelleher tell the story here.)

Dear Reader:

Thinking of what to pick up next at the bookstore or read with your book club? This month, we're spotlighting Aminatta Forna, 2014 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient, currently on tour with her widely-acclaimed new novel, Happiness. In her own words,

The Windham-Campbell Prizes announced today that Elizabeth Alexander will give the “Why I Write” opening ceremony keynote at its sixth annual festival (September 12-14), and that Yale University Press will publish an edition of the keynote given by last year’s speaker, Karl Ove Knausgaard, under the title Inadvertent this September 4th.

Dear Reader,

How are you? Like everyone else on the East Coast, we're scanning the skies for signs of spring, late in coming this year. Of course, as T. S. Eliot reminds us, April is the cruelest month …

The director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes recently made the call of a lifetime to eight entirely surprised writers, informing them that they will each be recognized with a $165,000 USD prize to support their writing. Awards will be conferred September 12-14 at an international literary festival at Yale, where the Prizes are based.

Established in 2013 with a gift from the late Donald Windham in memory of his partner of 40 years, Sandy M. Campbell, the prizes are among the richest and most prestigious literary prizes on earth.