Yiyun Li, Namwali Serpell, and Anne Boyer are among the winners of the annual Windham Campbell Prizes, Yale University’s prestigious literary awards for English language writers.
Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Manuscript Library announced the eight winners of the prizes on Thursday. Each winner will receive a $165,000 cash prize.
Li, who recently won PEN America’s Jean Stein Award for her novel Where Reasons End, was one of the winners in the fiction category, along with Serpell, author of The Old Drift. The anonymous judges praised Li for exploring “the landscape of loss with delicacy and precision,” and Serpell for “writing unerringly sure prose and re-enchanting the contemporary novel in the process.”
Nonfiction winner Boyer, author of The Undying, was cited for her “unflinching self-scrutiny” and for exposing “uncomfortable truths about our culture’s mistreatment of the individual in duress.” The other nonfiction writer to take home a prize was Ukrainian-Australian essayist Maria Tumarkin (Axiomatic), praised for her “relentless empathy and curiosity.”
The two poetry winners were Bhanu Kapil, who was recognized for her “transgressive, lyrical language,” and Jonah Mixon-Webster, the sole male winner, who the judges cited for his “tenderness and ferocity.”
The two drama prizes went to playwrights Julia Cho, cited for her “stagecraft intimate with cadences of the spoken and unspoken,” and Aleshea Harris, praised for “breathing life into ancient forms and indelibly making seen those who were unseen.”
The winning authors will receive their prizes at a ceremony scheduled for September.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
