Two Nigerian writers, Helon Habila and Teju Cole, have emerged winners in the 2015 edition of the Windham Campbell Prize, the biggest prize in literature in the world and will walk away with $150, 000 each. They emerged alongside seven other writers in the third edition of the prize established by Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell “to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns”.
The announcement was made today, February 24 in New York and in September, the winners will gather from around the world at Yale (where the Prizes are based), for an international literary festival celebrating their work.
“The Windham Campbell Prizes were created by a writer to support other writers,” said Michael Kelleher, director of the programme. “Donald Windham recognised that the most significant gift he could give to another writer was time to write. In addition to the recognition prestige it confers, the prize gives them just that — with no strings attached.”
Recipients are chosen for fiction, nonfiction and drama, with each receiving $150,000 unrestricted grants. Habila and Cole won in the fiction category with Ivan Vladislavić. In nonfiction it is Edmund de Waal, Geoff Dyer and John Jeremiah Sullivan, while drama has Jackie Sibblies Drury, Helen Edmundson, and Debbie Tucker Green.
