Windham-Campbell Prizes

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 ( @joyellemcsweeney ) * United States * Poetry ~ Karen Solie * Canada/Scotland * Poetry ~ Kei Miller * Jamaica * Nonfiction ~ Lucy Sante ( @luxxante ) * United States/Belgium * Nonfiction ~ Christina Anderson ( @thee.christinaanderson ) * United States * Drama ~ S. Shakthidharan ( @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 windhamcampbell.org ✨

🥁 Introducing this year’s Windham-Campbell Prize recipients 🥁 Each year, a nine-person selection committee gathers on Yale's campus to select the prize recipients. One of their tasks is to compose a sentence that encapsulates the writer’s work. This is, of course, impossible, but their attempts provide concise, thoughtful introductions. Here are this year's citations: NONFICTION ~ Kei Miller * Jamaica Kei Miller’s lyrical and trenchant essays hold a range of writerly selves and reveal deep and unsettling truths about the limits of language and the raced and gendered body moving through the world. ~ Lucy Sante ( @luxxante ) * United States/Belgium Legendary cultural critic, urban historian, and literary reporter, Lucy Sante focuses keen attention on overlooked facets of human experience and expands possibilities for nonfiction. FICTION ~ Gwendoline Riley * United Kingdom Gwendoline Riley's incisive novels lay bare the cruelties and complicities of intimacy in prose that is at once meticulous and ruthless. ~ Adam Ehrlich Sachs * United States Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s philosophical fiction is a bravura exploration of the history of knowledge in all of its absurdity, strangeness, and difficult beauty. POETRY ~ Joyelle McSweeney ( @joyellemcsweeney ) * United States Joyelle McSweeney’s wildly imaginative, rageful poems turn decay into sustenance and go on defying death by thriving on rot. ~ Karen Solie * Canada Through precise, profound, and wry plainspeaking verse, Karen Solie locates and interrogates the human apprehension of the world of things. DRAMA ~ Christina Anderson ( @thee.christinaanderson ) * United States In her deeply moving and beautifully layered plays, Christina Anderson mines intersections of intimate and political histories to breathe new life into the social drama as a form of ethical and metaphysical inquiry. ~ S. Shakthidharan ( @shakthidharan ) * Australia/Sri Lanka S. Shakthidharan draws from Tamil-Sri Lankan, South Asian, and Australian pasts to forge new meanings and connections among sprawling and complex histories. Head over to windhamcampbell.org to watch mini-docs on each of the prize recipients.

“Solie is an essential writer… anyone remotely interested in 21st-century literature, or 21st-century life, should read her.” — @telegraph Karen Solie shares an exclusive reading from WELLWATER, her latest collection of #poetry. Join us on @yale ’s campus, September 15-18, 2026, for our annual literature festival where you can enjoy more readings and talks by all of this year's Windham-Campbell Prize recipients!

2026 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient S. Shakthidharan shares an excerpt from his first play COUNTING AND CRACKING (@currencypress , 2020). “Something happened to my amma in Sri Lanka in 1983 and so now I’m here. But if whatever that was in 1983 had gone a little bit differently, I could be living in a house in Colombo. Or in a refugee camp in India. But I’m not. I’m in Sydney. Now I don’t know how or why, but I do know that because my amma came here, I met you. Now I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you—no I’m definitely sure I’m in love with you—but what I’m also trying to say is that it feels super weird to be in love with you in Coogee.”

The mission of the Windham-Campbell Prizes is to provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. This year, Lucy Sante is one of eight prize recipients across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama to receive an unrestricted grant of $175,000. The anonymous selection committee, consisting of nine experts in the field of literature, wrote, "Legendary cultural critic, urban historian, and literary reporter, Lucy Sante focuses keen attention on overlooked facets of human experience and expands possibilities for nonfiction." Congratulations, Lucy! P.S. Check out her latest book MY HEART & I AGREE out from @verse_chorus_press !

"This book is only for people who like joy, absurdity, passion, genius, dry wit, youthful folly, amusing historical arcana, or telescopes." ―Rivka Galchen, author of LITTLE LABORS Join us for a reading from THE ORGANS OF SENSE by Adam Ehrlich Sachs, recipient of the 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. #literature #bookstagram

The playwright Christina Anderson has had a passion for music her entire life. During the pandemic, she taught herself how to use Ableton Live to make Hip Hop beats. Now, producing music is a fun, and even spiritual way, for her to tell stories. #WindhamCampbellPrizes2026

The Poet Joyelle McSweeney shares her favorite place to walk in South Bend, Indiana. This path—a quirky alley full of history—might not lead you to where you thought you wanted to go, but it’ll get you “where you needed to go.” #WindhamCampbellPrizes2026

The mission of the Windham-Campbell Prizes is to provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. This year, Adam Ehrlich Sachs is one of eight prize recipients across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama to receive an unrestricted grant of $175,000. The anonymous selection committee, consisting of nine experts in the field of literature, wrote, “Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s philosophical fiction is a bravura exploration of the history of knowledge in all of its absurdity, strangeness, and difficult beauty.” Congratulations, Adam! #WindhamCampbellPrizes2026

Did you know that Jamaica has a history of cross-dressing and revolution? That the island has a population of 8,000 reindeer? The writer Kei Miller walks us through a few facts you should know about his home country. #WindhamCampbellPrizes2026

For Gwendoline Riley writing is life and life is writing. Here’s her simple, fail-proof method for writing a novel: 1) Sit down at your computer. 2) Move your sentences and paragraphs around. 3) Pay attention to the sounds and cadences of the sentences. 3) Do this over and over again for three or four years :) #WindhamCampbellPrizes2026

Playwright S. Shakthidharan’s childhood home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, was dismantled piece by piece and brought over to Sydney, Australia, where it was rebuilt. The house now represents a sense of hope amid loss. #WindhamCampbellPrizes2026