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Who Will Win the Prize?

February 10, 2015

Yale to Announce 2015 Recipients of Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes on February 24

At a media event on Tuesday, Feb. 24 at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale President Peter Salovey will announce the 2015 winners of the Windham Campbell Literature Prizes, among the world’s richest and most prestigious literary awards.

First awarded in 2013, the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes are global English-language awards that call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the ability to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. Prizewinners receive an unrestricted grant of $150,000. The prizes were established in 2010 with a gift from the late writer Donald Windham in memory of his partner of over 40 years, Sandy M. Campbell.

Up to nine prizes will be awarded in three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and drama. The prizes are open to English-language writers at all stages of their careers from anywhere in the world, so long as they have one published book or one professionally-produced play to their credit. Writers can be nominated for a body of significant work or for outstanding promise. Nominees are solicited confidentially from literary experts around the world. Nominees in each category are judged by a panel that selects the finalists, while the winners are selected by a committee, all of whom work anonymously. Only the names of the prizewinners are revealed.

Past winners include novelists James Salter, Tom McCarthy, and Jim Crace; nonfiction writers Jeremy Scahill, Pankaj Mishra, and Adina Hoffman; and playwrights Stephen Adly Guirgis, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Naomi Wallace. A full list of prize winners is available on our website.