The winners of the Windham-Campbell Prize 2022 have been announced today for 2022. Here are the six writers of African descent who made the list.
The Windham-Campbell Prize was established in 2013 with a gift from the late Donald Windham in memory of his partner of 40 years, Sandy M. Campbell. English language writers from anywhere in the world are nominated confidentially and judged anonymously for the prize worth US$165,000 for each of them. It is administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and the Manuscript Library at Yale University.
African winners have been Aminatta Forna (2014), Teju Cole, Helon Habila, and Ivan Vladislavić (2015), Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (2018), Kwame Dawes (2019), and Namwali Serpell (2020). 2021 was a bumper year for writers of African descent with Nathan Alan Davis, Michael R. Jackson, Dionne Brand, Renee Gladman, and Canisia Lubrin getting the big bucks.
The recipients of the awards for 2022 have been revealed with Mike Kelleher, Director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, saying:
“Across ten extraordinary years, the Windham-Campbell Prizes have celebrated exceptional literary achievement and nurtured great talent by giving the precious gifts of time, space and creative freedom. We are proud to mark our 10th anniversary with the most exciting list of recipients yet. Led by a trailblazing group of global women’s voices, these writers’ ambitious, skilful, and moving work bridges the distance between the history of nations and a deeply personal sense of self.”
The writers of African descent were a majority this year with 6 of the 8 making the list. These are;
- Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe) – fiction
- Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (Zimbabwe) – fiction
- Margo Jefferson (United States) – nonfiction
- Emmanuel Iduma (Nigeria) – nonfiction
- Winsome Pinnock (United Kingdom) – drama
- Sharon Bridgforth (United States) – drama