# Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes

The Donald Windham Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes are an American literary award which offers unrestricted grants in four categories, namely fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. Established at Yale University in 2011, the first prizes were presented in 2013. Administered by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the award recognizes English language writers from across the world. The mission of the award is to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. In 2017 the category of poetry was added and eight prizes have been awarded annually since then.
Since 2023, winners receive a citation, award and an unrestricted grant of $175,000. The individual prizes are among the richest literary prize amounts in the world, if not the richest in certain categories. The award is endowed from the combined estates of writer Donald Windham and actor Sandy Campbell. Campbell was Windham's companion of 45 years, and when Campbell died in 1988 he left his estate to Windham with the understanding a literary award would be created from the combined estate after Windham's death. Windham died in 2010, and in 2011 Yale announced they would become administrators of the new award.
The inaugural winners were announced on March 4, 2013, and a ceremony conferring the awards took place at Yale on September 10, 2013 with the nine recipients receiving a citation, award and an unrestricted grant of $150,000 each.

## Recipients

Windham–Campbell Literature Prize winners :
| Year | Category | Recipient | Country |
| 2013 | Drama | Stephen Adly Guirgis: "Stephen Adly Guirgis writes dramatic dialogue with passion and humor, creating characters who live on the edge, and whose linguistic bravado reinvigorates the American vernacular." | United States |
| 2013 | Drama | Tarell Alvin McCraney: "Tarell Alvin McCraney’s working class characters inhabit an extraordinary mythic universe, speaking a poetic language through which we grasp the spiritual stature of embattled people." | United States |
| 2013 | Drama | Naomi Wallace: "Naomi Wallace mines historical situations in plays that are muscular, devastating, and unwavering." | United States |
| 2013 | Fiction | Tom McCarthy: "Tom McCarthy constructs strange worlds where we find reflective echoes of our own and meditations on the meaning and making of art." | United Kingdom |
| 2013 | Fiction | James Salter: "Sentence by sentence, James Salter’s elegantly natural prose has a precision and clarity which make ordinary words swing wide open." | United States |
| 2013 | Fiction | Zoë Wicomb: "Zoë Wicomb’s subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenges of being in the world." | South Africa |
| 2013 | Non-Fiction | Adina Hoffman: "In a land where even the most cautious nonfiction can draw howls of protest, Adina Hoffman combines fastidious listening, even-handed research, and prose so engaged that it makes the long-vanished visible again." | United States |
| 2013 | Non-Fiction | Jeremy Scahill: "Jeremy Scahill’s investigative reporting is in the best tradition of speaking truth to power, waging a political campaign by journalistic means, indefatigable in its detail and international in outlook." | United States |
| 2013 | Non-Fiction | Jonny Steinberg: "Using a novelistic style that gives everyday people heroic complexity and scale, Jonny Steinberg allows us to encounter lives that enlarge our empathy and sharpen our understanding of the human condition." | South Africa |
| 2014 | Drama | Kia Corthron: "Through her command of dramatic spectacle, Kia Corthron places often unheard and marginalized characters within a historical and political context that gives their lives an urgent and poetic resonance." | United States |
| 2014 | Drama | Sam Holcroft: "Sam Holcroft’s plays explore the routinized and expressive registers of language, gesture, and role-playing, walking the uncomfortably thin line between spectatorship and complicity." | United Kingdom |
| 2014 | Drama | Noëlle Janaczewska: "Noëlle Janaczewska brings innovative stagecraft and a questioning voice to plays that translate cultural and political tensions into drama as complex as it is illuminating." | Australia |
| 2014 | Fiction | Nadeem Aslam: "Nadeem Aslam’s deftly crafted novels explore historical and political trauma with lyricism and profound compassion." | Pakistan / United Kingdom |
| 2014 | Fiction | Jim Crace: "Jim Crace's ever-varied novels return us to the body, to ceremony and to community in a disenchanted world, transforming the indifferent and the repugnant alike into things of beauty." | United Kingdom |
| 2014 | Fiction | Aminatta Forna: "Aminatta Forna writes through and beyond personal experience to speak to the wider world in subtly constructed narratives that reveal the ongoing aftershocks of living through violence and war." | Sierra Leone / United Kingdom |
| 2014 | Non-Fiction | Pankaj Mishra: "Pursuing high standards of literary style, Pankaj Mishra gives us new narratives about the evolution of modern Asia. He charts the journey from the Indian small town to the metropolis and rebuffs imperialist clichés with equal verve." | India |
| 2014 | Non-Fiction | John Vaillant: "John Vaillant writes gripping narratives that combine science, geography, history and anthropology to convey his passionate commitment to preserving natural resources in an environmentally threatened world." | United States / Canada |
| 2015 | Drama | Jackie Sibblies Drury: "Jackie Sibblies Drury deftly blends historical inquiry and meta-theatrical experiment to challenge assumptions about race, performance, and individual responsibility." | United States |
| 2015 | Drama | Helen Edmundson: "Helen Edmundson’s ambitious plays distill historical complexities through characters whose passions and ethical dilemmas mirror and illuminate a larger political landscape." | United Kingdom |
| 2015 | Drama | Debbie Tucker Green: "Pushing speech and silence to the limit, Debbie Tucker Green’s plays expose the brutal choices of individuals bound by the imperatives of family, society, and love." | United Kingdom |
| 2015 | Fiction | Teju Cole: "Teju Cole’s peripatetic narrators, like his prose, revel in the possibilities and limitations of global urbanity, navigating the fine line between choice and circumstance, perception and memory." | United States / Nigeria |
| 2015 | Fiction | Helon Habila: "Helon Habila is that rare combination of storyteller and stylist who challenges expectations while deepening our empathy for ordinary people confronting extraordinary times." | Nigeria |
| 2015 | Fiction | Ivan Vladislavic: "Ivan Vladislavić’s fiction explores the uncomfortable aftermath of apartheid through inventive meditations on the complex intersection of history, politics, and art." | South Africa |
| 2015 | Non-Fiction | Edmund de Waal: "Edmund de Waal’s sure narrative instinct and lyrical imagination inform a deeply felt examination of the hold that objects have on our personal and collective memory." | United Kingdom |
| 2015 | Non-Fiction | Geoff Dyer: "Omnivorously curious and psychologically probing, Geoff Dyer’s writings reinvent again and again the possibilities of nonfiction, discovering as many new subjects as he does ways of writing about them." | United Kingdom |
| 2015 | Non-Fiction | John Jeremiah Sullivan: "John Jeremiah Sullivan’s wide-ranging, exuberant essays engage the full spectrum of American life with passion, precision, and wit." | United States |
| 2016 | Drama | Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: An Octoroon and War | United States |
| 2016 | Drama | Hannah Moscovitch: East of Berlin | Canada |
| 2016 | Drama | Abbie Spallen: Lally the Scut (2015) and Pumpgirl (2006) | Ireland |
| 2016 | Fiction | Tessa Hadley: Clever Girl (2013) and The Past (2016) | United Kingdom |
| 2016 | Fiction | C. E. Morgan: All the Living | United States |
| 2016 | Fiction | Jerry Pinto: Em and the Big Hoom | India |
| 2016 | Non-Fiction | Hilton Als: White Girls (2013) and The Women (1996) | United States |
| 2016 | Non-Fiction | Stanley Crouch: Don’t the Moon Look Lonesome? | United States |
| 2016 | Non-Fiction | Helen Garner: This House of Grief (2014) | Australia |
| 2017 | Drama | Marina Carr | Ireland |
| 2017 | Drama | Ike Holter | United States |
| 2017 | Fiction | André Alexis | Canada / Trinidad and Tobago |
| 2017 | Fiction | Erna Brodber | Jamaica |
| 2017 | Non-Fiction | Maya Jasanoff | United States |
| 2017 | Non-Fiction | Ashleigh Young | New Zealand |
| 2017 | Poetry | Ali Cobby Eckermann | Australia |
| 2017 | Poetry | Carolyn Forché | United States |
| 2018 | Drama | Lucas Hnath for "agile writing which ranges across genres and subjects with voracious curiosity; his wit, formal daring and poetic precision crystallize dramas that are socially incisive and indelible." Works include The Christians (2014) and A Doll's House, Part 2 (2017). | United States |
| 2018 | Drama | Suzan-Lori Parks: for being "an artist whose ethical imagination confronts rather than consoles; she acknowledges in the fissures of language and human relations the complexities of a fraught world." Works include The Death of Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1992), Venus (1996), Topdog/Underdog (2001), and Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) (2014). | United States |
| 2018 | Fiction | John Keene: for writing that "[w]ith coruscating imagination, language and thought, …experiments with concealed scenes from history and literature, stepping outside the confines of conventional narrative." Works include Annotations (1995) and Counternarratives (2015). | United States |
| 2018 | Fiction | Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi: for work that "opens up a bold and innovatory vista in African letters, encompassing ancient wounds that disquiet the present, and offering the restitution to be found in memory and ritual." She is the author of the novel Kintu (2014). | Uganda / United Kingdom |
| 2018 | Non-Fiction | Sarah Bakewell for work that "unknots complex philosophical thought with verve and wit; her eye for detail and her animated conversation bring readers to inhabit the lives of great philosophers." Works include How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (2010) and At the Existentialist Café (2016). | United Kingdom |
| 2018 | Non-Fiction | Olivia Laing for being "a cartographer of human emotion, mixing memoir, biography and critical engagement with an acute sense of place; through the arts, she searches the depths of the self." Works include To the River (2011), The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), and The Lonely City (2016). | United Kingdom |
| 2018 | Poetry | Lorna Goodison for poetry that "draws us into a panoramic history of a woman’s life, bearing witness to female embodiment, the colonial legacy, mortality, and the sacred." She is the author of 13 collections of poetry including I Am Becoming My Mother (1986) and Oracabessa (2013). | Canada / Jamaica |
| 2018 | Poetry | Cathy Park Hong for poetry with "exhilarating and surprising language that connects us to unheard migrant voices, and her searching look at dystopic states which gives her poetry urgent power." Works include Dance Dance Revolution (2007) and Engine Empire (2012). | United States |
| 2019 | Drama | Patricia Cornelius | Australia |
| 2019 | Drama | Young Jean Lee | United States |
| 2019 | Fiction | David Chariandy | Canada |
| 2019 | Fiction | Danielle McLaughlin | Ireland |
| 2019 | Non-Fiction | Raghu Karnad | India |
| 2019 | Non-Fiction | Rebecca Solnit | United States |
| 2019 | Poetry | Kwame Dawes | Ghana / Jamaica / United States |
| 2019 | Poetry | Ishion Hutchinson | Jamaica |
| 2020 | Drama | Julia Cho: "In stagecraft intimate with cadences of the spoken and unspoken, Julia Cho enlivens human connection in the languages of home and estrangement." | United States |
| 2020 | Drama | Aleshea Harris: "Aleshea Harris’s meticulous pageantries of brutal injustice vibrate with rage, grief, hope, and truth, breathing life into ancient forms and indelibly making seen those who were unseen." | United States |
| 2020 | Fiction | Yiyun Li: "Yiyun Li masterfully explores the landscape of loss with delicacy and precision, restoring the fractured lives of ordinary people on the margins, endowing them with agency and power." | United States |
| 2020 | Fiction | Namwali Serpell: "Namwali Serpell reimagines the transmission of modern history through the commingled lives of her Zambian characters, writing unerringly sure prose and re-enchanting the contemporary novel in the process." | United States / Zambia |
| 2020 | Non-Fiction | Anne Boyer: "With unflinching self-scrutiny, Anne Boyer exposes uncomfortable truths about our culture’s mistreatment of the individual in duress and the ways in which we are complicit in that neglect." | United States |
| 2020 | Non-Fiction | Maria Tumarkin: "Maria Tumarkin's inventive writing on our current historical moment shows a relentless empathy and curiosity about the complexities of our world and its uncertainties." | Australia |
| 2020 | Poetry | Bhanu Kapil: "Through transgressive, lyrical language Bhanu Kapil undoes multiple genres to excavate crucial questions of trauma, healing, immigration, and embodiment at the outskirts of performance and process." | United States / United Kingdom |
| 2020 | Poetry | Jonah Mixon-Webster: "With tenderness and ferocity, Jonah Mixon-Webster invents dynamic multi-modal forms to indict structural racism, and to connect the personal to the violence and beauty of history." | United States |
| 2021 | Drama | Nathan Alan Davis | United States |
| 2021 | Drama | Michael R. Jackson | United States |
| 2021 | Fiction | Dionne Brand | Canada / Trinidad and Tobago |
| 2021 | Fiction | Renee Gladman | United States |
| 2021 | Non-fiction | Kate Briggs | United Kingdom / The Netherlands |
| 2021 | Non-fiction | Vivian Gornick | United States |
| 2021 | Poetry | Canisia Lubrin | Canada / Saint Lucia |
| 2021 | Poetry | Natalie Scenters-Zapico | United States |
| 2022 | Drama | Sharon Bridgforth | United States |
| 2022 | Drama | Winsome Pinnock | United Kingdom |
| 2022 | Fiction | Tsitsi Dangarembga | Zimbabwe |
| 2022 | Fiction | Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu | Zimbabwe |
| 2022 | Non-fiction | Emmanuel Iduma | Nigeria |
| 2022 | Non-fiction | Margo Jefferson | United States |
| 2022 | Poetry | Zaffar Kunial | United Kingdom |
| 2022 | Poetry | Wong May | Ireland / Singapore / China |
| 2023 | Drama | Jasmine Lee-Jones | United Kingdom |
| 2023 | Drama | Dominique Morisseau | United States |
| 2023 | Fiction | Percival Everett | United States |
| 2023 | Fiction | Ling Ma | United States |
| 2023 | Non-fiction | Darran Anderson | Ireland / United Kingdom |
| 2023 | Non-fiction | Susan Williams | United Kingdom |
| 2023 | Poetry | Alexis Pauline Gumbs | United States |
| 2023 | Poetry | dg nanouk okpik | United States |
| 2024 | Drama | Christopher Chen | United States |
| 2024 | Drama | Sonya Kelly | Ireland |
| 2024 | Fiction | Deirdre Madden | Ireland |
| 2024 | Fiction | Kathryn Scanlan | United States |
| 2024 | Non-fiction | Hanif Abdurraqib | United States |
| 2024 | Non-fiction | Christina Sharpe | Canada / United States |
| 2024 | Poetry | Jen Hadfield | Canada / United Kingdom |
| 2024 | Poetry | M. NourbeSe Philip | Canada / Trinidad and Tobago |