Poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib among 8 winners of $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes.

By The Associated Press on April 2, 2024.

NEW YORK (AP) – Poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib, fiction writers Deirdre Madden and Kathryn Scanlan and playwright Christopher Chen are among this year’s recipients of Windham-Campbell Prizes, for which winners each receive $175,000 cash awards.

The prizes are designed to enable artists to “focus on their creative practice independent of financial concerns,” prize officials announced Tuesday. The other winners are cultural critic Christina Sharpe, dramatist Sonya Kelly and poets M. NourbeSe Philip and Jen Hatfield.

“Each year, I feel incredibly honored to call the eight recipients: to be the messenger delivering the entirely unexpected and life-changing news that they have been awarded $175,000. It is clear – now, more than ever – how challenging working in the creative industries, around the world, can be,” prize director Michael Kelleher said in a statement.

The awards were established in 2011 at Yale University endowed by the estates of writer Donald Windham and actor Sandy Campbell. Previous honorees include playwright Michael R. Jackson, critic-novelist Stanley Crouch and novelist Percival Everett.

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