Posted on March 30, 2022 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
They may have hoped for this day, but it still always comes as a surprise.
The 2022 Windham Campbell Prize, which awards an unrestricted grant of $165,000 to each of its winners, was announced yesterday.
And unlike other literary prizes, the eight recipients have no idea they’re under consideration until they’re told that they’ve won.
Novelist and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga, a previous winner of the PEN Pinter Prize, told the Guardian that she had spent years “not always believing but constantly hoping” that she could take this award home.
Another winner, the Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson, described this latest accolade as "blissful" because it enables an artist to trust in their vision.
But the biggest emotional response probably came from poet Wong May, who described the award as "miraculous" because she has "gone underground with my poetry for 40 years.”
Congratulations to the following writers!
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Nonfiction: Emmanuel Iduma and Margo Jefferson
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Drama: Sharon Bridgforth and Winsome Pinnock
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Fiction: Tsitsi Dangarembga and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
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Poetry: Zaffar Kunial and Wong May
See why each recipient was chosen on the Windham Campbell Prize page, and check out their websites to learn more about them.
Categories: Today in Books