The Donald Windham Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes
どなるど・うぃんだむ・さんでぃ・えむ・きゃんべる ぶんがくしょう
An annual literary prize run by Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library for English-language writers worldwide, with each recipient receiving an unrestricted grant of $175,000.
- Established
- 2011
- Organizer
- Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Yale University)
- Category
- Poetry and Contemporary Poetry
- Selection Method
- Recommendation
- Target
- Professional
- Frequency
- 1 per year
- Status
- Active
Description
International literary prize administered by Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Yale University). Established in 2011, first awarded in 2013. Recognizes writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama (plays) categories, awarding certificates and unrestricted grants. Poetry category added in 2017, with 8 winners annually since then. From 2023, each winner receives $175,000 USD, counting it among the world's highest-paying literary prizes. Aims to highlight literary achievements and provide writers with an environment free from financial concerns to focus on creation.
Prize
- Main Prize
- Winners receive a citation, award ceremony, and unrestricted grant.
- Cash Prize
- 175,000 USD
- Citation
- Award ceremony (sometimes held at Yale University)
- In past years, $150,000 or $165,000 per person was awarded
- Official announcement and media exposure for winners
Selection
Selection Process
| Stage | Judges | Pass Rate | Announcement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nomination/Candidate Selection | Selection committee (Beinecke Library and Yale affiliates, including external members) | — | Candidates are often selected non-publicly by the selection committee. |
| Final Selection/Decision | Deliberation and decision by the selection committee (details not disclosed) | — | Results are officially announced after individual notification to winners. |
| Awarding/Announcement | — | — | Announced on official website, YaleNews, press releases, etc. Award ceremony may be held. |
Criteria
- Literary achievement or promise
- Works in English
- Originality and technical excellence
- International perspective or influence, contribution as a writer
Application Tips
Dos
- 英語での作品群を継続的に作り、出版や評価で実績を積む（受賞は業績に基づく）
- 出版社・編集者・研究機関との関係を築き、ノミネーション経路を整えておく
- 長期的なキャリアと一貫した作家性を示す
- 受賞金を創作活動に充てる具体的な計画を持つ（助成の趣旨に合致させる）
Don''ts
- 自己推薦や単発の応募のみで期待しすぎない（多くは委員会による選定）
- 短期的な話題作のみで応募条件を満たすことを狙わない
- 虚偽の情報や誇張を記載しない
From Judges
- 一貫性のある作品群と成熟した作家としての声を重視する
- 独創性と技術的完成度、作品の深さを評価する
- 英語での表現力と国際的な視野が評価されやすい
Related Awards
- Bollingen Prize
- Pulitzer Prize
- Booker Prize (Man Booker / International Booker)
- PEN America Awards
- List of the world's highest-paying literary prizes
Official Resources
https://windhamcampbell.org/Past Winners
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Patricia Cornelius's literary achievement and promise in drama, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. She turns the lives of marginalized people into drama shaped by social anger and deep compassion, writing class, gender, and labor conflict without complacency.
The award recognizes Patricia Cornelius's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Young Jean Lee's literary achievement and promise in experimental drama, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. She moves across theatrical forms to unsettle audience assumptions. Naturalism, cabaret, and wordless performance become methods of critique through formal change itself.
The award recognizes Young Jean Lee's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored David Chariandy's literary achievement and promise in fiction, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. He connects migrant history with intimate relationships, writing loss, siblings, memory, and Black diasporic experience with quiet intensity.
The award recognizes David Chariandy's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Danielle McLaughlin's literary achievement and promise in short fiction, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. Set in Irish everyday life, her stories reveal the beauty and brutality of relationships through unsettling, almost fable-like detail.
The award recognizes Danielle McLaughlin's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Raghu Karnad's literary achievement and promise in nonfiction, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. He excavates colonial military history and family history, restoring the experience of Indian soldiers in the Second World War to public memory.
The award recognizes Raghu Karnad's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Rebecca Solnit's literary achievement and promise in essays, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. She crosses politics, history, art, and feminism while asking how precise language relates to freedom. Her prose is critical without surrendering hope.
The award recognizes Rebecca Solnit's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Kwame Dawes's literary achievement and promise in poetry, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. Drawing on Afro-Caribbean history, migration, faith, and music, he writes poetry of compassion and moral seriousness that resonates across continents.
The award recognizes Kwame Dawes's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
The 2019 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize honored Ishion Hutchinson's literary achievement and promise in poetry, not one specific book. The official citation addresses the writer's body of work and values the themes, forms, and social vision running through it. He brings Jamaican and world literary memory into poems marked by sonic precision, historical depth, and formal adventure.
The award recognizes Ishion Hutchinson's body of work and achievement as a writer rather than a single title.
A play by Lucas Hnath that uses The Christians to explore faith and church, with priests in view.
A story where faith meets church.
A novel by Suzan Lori Parks that uses The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World to explore story and memory, with society in view.
A story where story meets memory.
A play by John Keene that uses Annotations to explore african american families and african american youth, with saint louis (mo.) in view.
A story where african american families meets african american youth.
A nonfiction book by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi that uses Kintu to explore origin and chiefdoms, with ugandan fiction (english) in view.
A story where origin meets chiefdoms.
A biography by Sarah Bakewell that uses How to Live: A Life of Montaigne to explore biography and conduct of life, with history in view.
A story where biography meets conduct of life.
A nonfiction book by Olivia Laing that uses To the river to explore travel and description and travel, with england in view.
A story where travel meets description and travel.
A poetry collection by Lorna Goodison that uses I am becoming my mother to explore women and jamaica, with history in view.
A story where women meets jamaica.
A poetry collection by Cathy Park Hong that uses Dance Dance Revolution to explore poetry and asian american authors, with women in view.
A story where poetry meets asian american authors.
A play that brings Greek tragedy into the present and focuses on female anger and loss from the side of the defeated.
A tragedy that begins at the end of war and keeps a quiet but forceful tone.
A play in which a group of millennial friends confronts adulthood and chaos when one of them returns after being presumed dead.
Behind the jokes, the play carries the weight of interrupted and restarted lives.
A novel set in a small Canadian town that weaves together faith, miracles, desire, and philosophical inquiry.
Miracle-like events and inner uncertainty gradually enter a quiet town.
This entry covers Erna Brodber's fiction, which moves between the shadows of colonial history and individual memory, especially through diaspora and identity.
A body of fiction centered on Jamaican memory and identity.
This entry covers Maya Jasanoff's history writing, which connects imperial history and biography while probing the relationship between power and memory.
History writing that links empire and biography.
This entry covers a set of essays that use place, family, and growth to explore private experience in a quiet, attentive voice.
Essays that explore private experience in a restrained voice.
This entry covers poetry that weaves Indigenous experience, trauma, and the memory of colonialism into a world built from vivid images.
Poetry shaped by Indigenous experience and trauma.
This entry covers poetry that turns political reality and ethical tension into sharp, resonant verse.
Poetry that echoes the tensions of politics and ethics.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for the force and range of a playwright’s body of work.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for the force and range of a playwright’s body of work.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for the force and range of a playwright’s body of work.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for the density and range of a novelist’s body of work.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for the density and range of a novelist’s body of work.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for the intimacy and range of a writer’s body of work.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for work that moves between criticism and writing.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for work that moves between criticism and writing.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recognition for work as both a writer and nonfiction writer.
The award is directed at the strength and range of the writer’s body of work, not a single book.
A body of plays that turns history, politics, and marginalized lives into stage tension, drawing individual memory and social fracture into dramatic form.
Uses the language of the stage to dig into social fault lines.
A body of plays that handles theatre, language, and the audience’s gaze with precision, turning the mechanics of conversation into dramatic tension.
The movement of language itself becomes the engine of drama.
A body of work that uses stagecraft and experimental theatre to give shape to political and cultural instability.
Experiment and stagecraft make social change visible.
A body of novels that renders historical violence and trauma in dense, lyrical prose.
Wound and memory accumulate as quiet tension.
A body of novels that focuses on community, ritual, and bodily experience to build worlds where different layers of time overlap.
Ritual and bodily sensation fold the narrative’s time back on itself.
A body of novels that explores war, memory, and trauma through delicate narration and a broad social perspective.
The shadow of war quietly changes shape deep inside memory.
A body of nonfiction that thinks through the modernization of Asia and postcolonial movement by crossing ideas with history.
Re-reading Asia from the point where intellectual and modern history meet.
A body of nonfiction that writes the tension between environment, nature, and science with vivid, field-based prose.
Turns the meeting point of nature and science into tense narrative.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.
This prize recognizes the author’s body of work rather than a single standalone book.
The prize honors the body of work itself rather than a single title.