The 2019 edition of the annual Windham-Campbell Prizes has honored eight English-language literary writers across various genres and ethnicities representing different parts of the world for their endeavors in enriching the global English-language literary scene.

Administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in the United States, the winners were announced on March 13 in the Stationer’s Hall, London, in conjunction with the London Book Fair, which took place from March 12 to 14.

Eight winners for the prize’s four categories each receive US$165,000 to support their writing.

The 2019 winners are Danielle McLaughlin (Ireland) and David Chariandy (Canada) in the fiction category, Raghu Karnad (India) and Rebecca Solnit (US) in nonfiction, Ishion Hutchinson (Jamaica) and Kwame Dawes (Ghana/Jamaica/US) in poetry and Young Jean-lee (US) and Patricia Cornelius (Australia) in drama.

According to the prize committee, English language writers from anywhere in the world are eligible to be shortlisted before being nominated and judged anonymously. They do not even know that they are shortlisted.

Upon finishing the selection process, Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher calls the recipients to let them know that they have been considered for the prize, which almost always surprises them.

Many past recipients, such as Australian writers Helen Garner (2016) and Cornelius (2019) say they initially thought that the phone call notifying them of winning a $165,000 prize was a hoax until later they were further reassured the news was real.

“Even though we are based at Yale, this is an international prize and we want to celebrate this in the heart of one of the great multicultural cities of the world,” Kelleher says, explaining the prize committee’s decision to announce the award recipients live from London.

One of the committee’s biggest challenges is to find English-language nonfiction works from around the world to be shortlisted.

Life begins at 40: Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin (pictured above) suddenly had to quit her job as a legal practitioner at the age of 40 because of some illnesses and tried writing literary fiction. (Courtesy of Windham-Campbell Prizes)

Indian journalist and writer Raghu Karnad is one such nonfiction writer, who won this year’s Windham-Campbell Prizes award for his 2015 debut Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (published by W.W. Norton).

The award committee says that through his book, Karnad has created “an epic unforgetting that brings the experience of Indian soldiers of the World War II into our common compass”. Karnad combines forensic archival research with national and colonial histories told in a passionate narrative.

Winners of this year’s program say the prize has equipped them with the financial means necessary to pursue their creative freedom.

Jean-lee, for instance, whom the committee cited as “a genuinely original playwright and theater-maker exploring diverse theatrical styles, forms and subjects with a dramaturgy that constantly takes risks and pushes boundaries”, says that the prize helps her allocate more of her time for her writing versus spending too much time earning a living.

“I haven’t produced a new work for five years, largely because I’ve been so busy trying to figure out how to make a living since my five-year Doris Duke Artist grant came to an end,” Jean-lee tells The Jakarta Post in an email interview.

McLaughlin, meanwhile, whose short stories were praised by the prize committee for their ability to “capture the beauty and brutality of human relationships, imbuing them with near-magical qualities rooted in the details of everyday life in a manner both wry and resonant”, echoes Jean-lee’s sentiment, saying that the prize is an homage to writers’ intellectual and creative endeavors itself.

“It’s an affirmation of the writing life, where so many hours, days and weeks can be spent on projects that we know will never make any money. When writers don’t have to worry about where the money is coming from, they have so much more creative energy to direct toward their work,” McLaughlin writes in an email to the Post.

The prize was established in 2013 by American writer Donald Windham (1920 to 2010) using an endowment from the combined estate of his gay partner of 40 years, American actor Sandy Campbell. The prize is among the richest and most prestigious literary prizes on Earth right now. The Nobel Prize in literature covers a cash prize worth approximately US$1.1 million (the value fluctuates annually).

The late Windham is often referred to as “the forgotten father of gay literature”. His 1965 novel Two People, on a married man who falls in love with another man on his travels, and his 1955 short story “Servants With Torches” illuminate life realities for homosexual men.

Literary speaking: British author Damian Barr (left) moderates a discussion with 2019 Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher (right) during the prize’s award ceremony on the sidelines of the London Book Fair in the United Kingdom. The ceremony was held in the Stationer’s Hall in London on March 13. (Courtesy of Honeybunn Photography)

The various ethnic and national backgrounds encompassed by the prize’s winners also seek to embody the spirit of human diversity and expression embodied by Windham and Campbell, who represented a minority.

This year’s prize winners are also still attempting to break boundaries within their own creative processes, while breaking those boundaries on a societal level as well.

“I’m writing a play about class for Broadway and it’s been really difficult because Americans don’t have a shared vocabulary for talking about class, the way they used to not have a shared vocabulary for talking about race,” Jean-lee says.

McLaughlin, meanwhile, seeks to embody women’s reality in her ongoing literary project.

“I’m currently finishing a novel […] called Retrospective and its main character is a woman in her 40s whose past intrudes on her life in the form of her dead friend’s son at the worst possible moment, at a time when both her professional life and personal life are already under pressure,” she says.

Both women appear to derive great satisfaction from their creative processes.

“I try to work with different genres and subject matters for each new show: Going out of my comfort zone compels me to challenge my assumptions and find value in unexpected places,” Jean-lee says.

McLaughlin, who made an inspiring turnaround in her midlife by quitting her legal practice because of an illness to try her hand at literary writing in her 40s, still enjoys drafting her manuscripts in longhand form, resulting in a slower, yet more deliberate, creative process.

“I always begin longhand in a notebook and it may be some weeks before I get to a stage where I will work on the story on a computer. Even then, if the story has a problem that needs to be teased out, I will work it out longhand first rather than attempting to work it out on the screen.”