The Windham-Campbell Prizes has announced the lineup for its 2024 festival, with Lydia Davis set to deliver the keynote address.
Davis, the short-story writer, essayist, and translator, will deliver a lecture titled “Why I Write” at the festival, which is set to run from Sept. 17-20 on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Davis’ address will take place on Sept. 18, the same day that the Windham-Campbell Prizes will be presented.
The winners of this year’s prizes include nonfiction writers Hanif Abdurraqib and Christina Sharpe, fiction writers Deirdre Madden and Kathryn Scanlan, poets m. nourbeSe philip and Jen Hadfield, and playwrights Christopher Chen and Sonya Kelly.
The prize winners will participate in a series of readings and discussions on Sept. 19 and 20. On Sept. 19, Scanlan and Elliott Holt will discuss the art of fiction, while Abdurraqib and Sharpe will celebrate Black performance in a panel with scholar Daphne Brooks.
On Sept. 20, Abdurraqib will talk basketball with James Jones, Yale’s head basketball coach, and Sharpe will discuss her book Ordinary Notes with art historian Nana Adusei-Poku.
Michael Kellher, director of the prizes, said in a statement, “The brilliance of the 2024 recipients is staggering, and we are delighted to connect these eight writers with audiences across the campus, to share experiences, insights and readings.”
A full schedule of festival events is available at the Windham-Campbell Prizes website.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
