Windham-Campbell Prizes

The Writer's Prize.

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

The Windham-Campbell Prizes were founded on the desire to celebrate literary achievement. Since 2013, we've awarded the finest writers in the English language with unrestricted grants of $175,000 each so they can do what they do best—across fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama—independent of financial concerns.

Introducing the #2026WindhamCampbellPrizes recipients:

~ Joyelle McSweeney * United States * Poetry
~ Karen Solie * Canada/Scotland * Poetry
~ Kei Miller * Jamaica * Nonfiction
~ Lucy Sante * United States/Belgium * Nonfiction
~ Christina Anderson * United States * Drama
~ S. Shakthidharan * Australia/Sri Lanka * Drama
~ Gwendoline Riley * United Kingdom * Fiction
~ Adam Ehrlich Sachs * United States * Fiction

To learn more about these brilliant writers, head over to https://t.co/D66bKm3ItQ ✨

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

In the latest episode of the Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast, we sit down with the novelist Gwendoline Riley, whose book THE PALM HOUSE was recently longlisted for the @TheBookerPrizes, to discuss Mark Van Doren's SHAKESPEARE.

Listen on Literary Hub or wherever you listen to podcasts for a delightful, playful introduction to this book: https://t.co/wdk2Hyxftc

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

"It was a huge discovery to read this and to think that this teenager who I had understood to be sacrificed in this like patriarchal violence to start a war, because war comes first and all that... Actually, there's this other story where she is swept off to this dark isle and becomes part of a murder cult, and I quite enjoyed learning about this version of Iphigenia." —Joyelle McSweeney on Anne Carson's translation of Euripides's IPHIGENIA AMONG THE TAURIANS

https://t.co/W5IphNMISk

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

Join playwright Christina Anderson on the Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast for a conversation on Wallace Shawn's play THE FEVER: https://t.co/TyLHvHTiyI

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

“I found it, if not important, certainly useful to surround myself with the work of artists who, I guess in a way, are working through the same material and the same histories that I am working through in my own work… I consider them really my brothers and sisters, so that what I end up curating, I think, in my space is not so much about interior design. It’s about curating the conversation that is happening in my own mind.” —Kei Miller

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

“When I’m working on a big book, for example, the one I’m writing right now, I accumulate for years, sometimes. I’m taking notes on my laptop, and then I’ll print them out—double column, small type—cut them up, and mount them on index cards. And then I organize the index cards into piles. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the piles are chronological. Sometimes they’re by subject matter, et cetera. But I’m fooling with them all the time… I try to turn it into a game so that I’m following some kind of procedure.” —Lucy Sante

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

“I didn’t come to poetry until relatively late in my life.” —Karen Solie

It took Windham-Campbell Prize recipient Karen Solie many years before she started reading poems “with any seriousness.” When she did, she became fascinated by the effects poetry was generating for her—emotionally, intellectually, and physically—and grew interested in the puzzle of writing poetry herself.

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

“I’ve written five or six novels… They seem to take longer, and the writing doesn’t get easier. But, that’s good. You want the challenge to be commensurate to your abilities.” —Gwendoline Riley

#WindhamCampbellPrizes

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

"Things are always falling through other things... There's this sense of permeability that is very prevalent throughout the work."

Experience the work of Tomas Tranströmer through the eyes of Karen Solie: https://t.co/QnyoJegXVM

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

Playwright Christina Anderson has a writing routine that has gotten her through almost all of her theater pieces.

Once she has an idea of what her subject matter will be, Christina will “do an incredible amount of research" including reading across genres and even listening to music from that time period.

Then, she’ll get some paper or cardboard and write notes to herself with different quotes or other details she wants to keep in mind.

From there, she’ll fan out these notes, on a table or on the floor, and start mapping out what the story could be.

Finally, Christina will distill these ideas into an opening scene, and try to think about who her characters are and how they might engage with each other.

#WindhamCampbellPrizes

[Dustin Illingworth @ddillingworth]

For @PoetryFound, I wrote about the great Canadian poet Karen Solie. (link below)

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

Joyelle McSweeney pairs 5 new wave hits with poetry-in-translation for your delectation:

1) Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart" with Dolores Dorantes’ STYLE translated by Jen Hofer “for a whole swarm of avenging angels.”

2) The Smiths’ “This Charming Man" and THE HISTORY OF VIOLETS by Marosa di Giorgio translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas for “a whole garden full of killer flowers.”

3) For Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” you need to read BAUDELAIRE IN ENGLISH by Sean Bonney “because this is a work of great fidelity, great obsession, and great distress.”

4) Now, for The Cure’s “Why Can’t I Be You?” Joyelle invites you to read Kit Schluter's translation of Bruno Darío’s LANTANA, OR THE INDISSOLUBLE EXHALATION, a great work of impersonation and switching sides.

5) Finally, Joyelle *requires* you to listen to New Order’s “Dreams Never End" on infinite repeat while you read THE LAST BOOKS OF HÉCTOR VIEL TEMPERLEY, which is translated by Stuart Krimko. The result will have you “swimming out of your own consciousness and into the cosmos.”

#WindhamCampbellPrizes

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

#2026WindhamCampbellPrize recipient S. Shakthidharan is an award-winning playwright and father to two boys. At home, he writes late at night while his children are sleeping. When he’s traveling, he tries to find quiet places to work.

Recently, while he was in Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka, he discovered that the rooftop of his hotel provided just what he was looking for: a place to take a breath, look over the city, and focus on his craft.

[Rana Dasgupta @byranadasgupta]

Folks in Paris: come to my keynote lecture at the #FondationCartier this Friday. "Stories for a Nomad Century" opens a two-day symposium considering the large-scale installation "Exit" (2008-25). I will discuss the crisis in the quality of contemporary stories, and ask what narratives might restore our sense of meaning and purpose. Tickets here:

https://t.co/jsWkDFx3Bc
@fondationcartier

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

The 7th season of the #WindhamCampbellPrizes x Lit Hub podcast is here!

Join us for a conversation with Lucy Sante on AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW YORK POETS, edited by Ron Padgett and David Shapiro. The 1970 first edition featured cover art by Joe Brainard (!) and collected work by some of our all-time favorites including Frank O’ Hara, Bernadette Mayer, and Harry Mathews. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://t.co/zDDTMz7Hkv

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

Are you a writer for whom writing doesn’t come naturally?

#2026WindhamCampbellPrize recipient Adam Ehrlich Sachs believes that pursuing your obsessions will ultimately serve your fiction.

Adam quit atmospheric science, economics, screenwriting, and a PhD program in the history of science. After moving through these various fields of human inquiry, he landed on fiction as a way of weaving them all together. But not just any fiction. For his debut, he first tried writing a conventional novel about fathers and sons, before quitting that, too, and realizing that he had to dice the story into hundreds of microstories on fathers and sons to get at what he was really after.

We recommend the resulting book, INHERITED DISORDERS, for a dark, hilarious take on filial bonds.

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

2026 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient Gwendoline Riley reads an excerpt from her latest novel, THE PALM HOUSE. Read along: https://t.co/CB9DbUpram

[Rana Dasgupta @byranadasgupta]

"[A] brilliant study ... Combining deep history with soaring speculative insight, this is a by turns dire and thrilling vision of the future." Starred review of "After Nations" in

@PublishersWkly

https://t.co/rjj5Yc3lFe

[Windham-Campbell Prizes @WindhamCampbell]

2026 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient and @GeffenSchool alum Christina Anderson reads from the opening scene of her play HOW TO CATCH CREATION.

Griffin: Just because I’m a man…

Tammy: Yes.

Griffin: Means I shouldn’t smile at children?

Tammy: If I had my kid on the train and you smiled at my kid… you just shouldn’t do it.

Griffin: If you have a kid. And if I see the two of you on the train, I won’t smile. Why are you so negative?

Tammy: I’m a realist.

Griffin: The glass is always half empty with you. Hairline cracks that you don’t notice until it’s already filled with drink.

Tammy: I’m a realist. I have a TV. I read the paper, I watch the news. I talk to educated people.

Griffin: You’re a pessimist.

Tammy: I worry about you smiling at kids. It’s not a smart thing to do. People don’t trust men who are nice to kids they don’t know. Creeps and pervs ruined it for good men. You’re a good man. But those parents don’t know that, so when you smile…

Griffin: I get it.

Tammy: Just be careful.

[The Yale Review @yalereview]

"We may be heading into something less fatal but more depressingly entrenched than fascism." Rana Dasgupta on the future of democracy.
https://t.co/D1ouch1qls